heywoodu

Zhu Zhenyu's turn, one half of the truly epic Youth Olympic single mixed gold in Lillehammer

I can't even imagine having a Christmas tree still standing there in March, here people would think you died and nobody noticed so it's still there as a sad reminder But yeah, as for a day: whatever fits best Some people do it earlier, others later, and of course there's always people who simply don't care enough to put up a tree.

We really have no specific day for it Yesterday there was time in between the regular obligations like work and such, so perfect moment to go and get a tree. Usually it stays 'pretty' until late December or so and then somewhere in the first days of January we cut it in pieces and burn the thing

In the end it was mostly just Hauser who was very, very slow

Elvira is insanely fast. But seriously.

New Christmas decorations On the day the Christmas tree went up here, with new balls for the first time in years

Doesn't FIS have the winning margin stats anymore on their website? Edit: Ah, it's called biggest gap now https://www.fis-ski.com/DB/general/statistics.html?statistictype=positions&positionstype=biggest-gap&sectorcode=AL&seasoncode=&categorycode=WC&disciplinecode=DH&gendercode=W&nationcode=

Fuck yeah that's better!!!

@hckošice That could make today's situation a bit of a big deal. There is a classic distance race in Austria on the 18th, the week after they're already in Austria anyway, so that would be perfect, but it's the Brazilian federation....even with this being a potentially crucial race, they might just as easily say "Ah alright, we'll go to our Christmas location earlier then " instead of race.

No, but that was already planned. There is no reason whatsoever to start there, since it won't count for the Olympic ranking anyway and it's basically just a waste of energy She'll be in tomorrow's sprint qualifying though, so...new day, new chances!

And that's a DNF for Bruna, sadly. She was overtaken in a downhill by someone (we believe Keidy Kaasiku of Estonia) who then immediately pulled up straight in front of her and braked before a turn for which Bruna wasn't going to brake. The result was sudden evasive action...and quite a fall, just nothing to do about it when someone makes a move like that. Hurt knee afterwards, so there was no point in going on for more than half of the race just to lose more time and potentially damage the knee. Excellent result for Jaque meanwhile, with a good result for Mika as well.

Impressive race for Jaque so far, a minute ahead of Mika after one lap, with Bruna a few seconds behind. Nothing to panic about yet, the plan was to have the focus of the race in the second half and especially the last lap, so as long as she stays in touch with Mika's times, it should be going fine.

Wow, the wonderfully named Germana Thannheimer put down a burner of a final climb and went from 23 seconds down with 800m to go to only 2,3 seconds down at the finish

Duda will end up 4:54 behind the winner, unless Julie Pierrel increases her pace and beats the fastest time, but it's not looking like it so far. Pretty good result for Duda, it's not possible to say exactly yet (as we don't know the full top-5 yet) but it looks like roughly 300 FIS points for her.

Aaaaand we're live! First up, for Brazil at least, is Duda in the junior race!

Czerwonka seems to be ok, at least. Presumably Coopmans will be out for a bit and have quite the headache due to the concussion, but it seems like that's going to be all and he'll be mostly fine in a few days.

Nasty crash at the end of today's morning training. Natalia Czerwonka lost balance, crashed and then hit Dutch national coach Jan Coopmans at high speed (he was facing away from her at the moment), causing him to hit the back of his head hard on the ice and lose consciousness for a bit. Taken to the hospital and they're suspecting quite a strong concussion at the least. Dutch media annoyingly didn't mention anything about Czerwonka's condition, so unless the opposite is being said, I'm going to assume she luckily is alright.

Stream for tomorrow's race with the Brazilians (no idea what to expect, but it's something at least) Start lists can be found here: https://docdro.id/Y6dxREO

I think I missed one, I only saw this: https://olympics.com/ioc/news/ioc-statement-on-the-situation-of-peng-shuai Which is too soft, to say the least, but definitely not lower than anything they've done previously.

Did IOC have a significant reputation (in a positive way) to begin with?

The only actual issues in terms of the Games being somewhat succesful are the things surrounding the virus and the expected lack of snow, with many venues in the mountains still looking....well, the opposite of snowy. Everything political or semi-political won't actually have a large impact on the Games, other than a head of state of one country or another not being there, but who cares about that anyway

But if there's the tiniest whiff of trouble, you are sure things will be cancelled....so yeah

Netherlands lost by two points to Iceland, which was a bit of a negative surprise....and then lost by only two points to Italy, which is more of a "damn, so close to a nice surprise!" kind of feeling. Ugh.

The Dutch Eurosport commentator for cross-country is excellent though, so there's that....you know, if you'd understand it

Which I'd say means there simply is no somewhat serious team, instead of 'they didn't comply with harsh internal standards'