heywoodu

Yeah, Woods was basically the shimmering light that avoided a total darkness there All Froome did was drop like a brick as soon as the road went up by more than 2%. Several millions well spent.

Defending Michael Woods' 27th place in the GC from Ion Izagirre who's in the lead group and might overtake him? It's either that or going on a useless chase for a 6th place for Greipel But since it's too late to actually catch the group and so Greipel's 6th place isn't happening, maybe it's a punishment for what has been - let's be fair - a godawful Tour by them.

"Yes, I like it. It fits nicely like this!" I find it so.....'different' than I actually like it You know, sort of.

It's of course not likely that Slovakia being Slovakia has any effect on the whole thing, but damn that sucks So typical for a sports federation to fuck things up like this. I know it's always possible perhaps a national federation did actually misread something, but way more likely ISSF just screwed up and the athletes are the victims. At least now I have a team to cheer for in the mixed event, go Slovakia!

See my edit

What was he doing there in the first place, considering Uganda has no weightlifting quota? Edit: I see, he was on a waiting list and had been informed he didn't make it. Was in Japan in case he would, makes sense. Sad though..

Ugh, these are threads one doesn't want to read back. Most of the things I had completely missed in the chaos of last winter, I was until now living under the assumption the 50k race walk had been saved after all, instead of being murdered And all the quota reductions, what the hell. Not doing wonders for my enthousiasm for next week, which was starting to get high

Sad at it may be, that is a rather weak bit of reacting from McLeod....I mean, surely he didn't run his semifinal the night before alone, and surely he wasn't the only person running the early morning final? How about those who did make it? All of those athletes had to run their final in the morning, and probably knew so beforehand...

One of the sadder 'doping' stories recently, I'd say. First things first, it is entirely her own fault and nothing can take that away, but it's only human to not be able to deal with the death of a parent and lose control over yourself in a way that's perfectly fine for a non-athlete, but sadly not for an athlete. One of the few cases in which I can actually feel some sympathy for someone who tested positive (same with a lot of East German and Soviet athletes who were doped/drugged from when they were only teenagers), even though like I said it is of course 100% on her and her punishment is sad, but correct.

Heavy rain in western Germany, eastern Belgium and southern Netherlands earlier this week. In the Netherlands the damage so far is luckily only material (floodings and such), but in Germany the death toll has gone up from 30 or so yesterday to 81 by now, with 1300 people missing (most of them hopefully just because of the mobile networks being lost and so them not being able to contact anyone), while in Belgium 12 people have died so far. Really unprecedented natural violence in these parts. Whole villages have been damaged, especially those small German towns situated in tight corners of rivers, where something like this sadly was just a matter of time

Not likely. One would assume athletes have to show a negative test, for example, and it's not like any random person can just go and provide a document for any other random athlete and say it happens to be positive

Although BMX is such an easy sport for things to go wrong, one would have to be extremely dominant to be considered a safe medal, I'd say... And personally I really can't see the Belgians as safe medals (gold even!) in the road cycling Sure, they both have an excellent chance, but in the road race there's at least 20 riders who have an excellent chance, including some who are usually better climbers than Evenepoel and Van Aert - even though they might hold on of course, they are definitely among the 20+ riders with a good gold medal chance. As for the ITT, they both have a chance as well, but the likes of Pogacar, Roglic (if recovered), Cavagna, Küng and so on are equally as dangerous, and that's not even counting on Ganna yet, who we can assume will be in top shape.

Pogacar after today's stage in the interview: "Why should I be worried?" He's right of course, it's a bit odd the interviewer somehow tried to seriously let Pogacar say anything could happen or something

Post the Danish biggest rivals as safe medals

One of the nicest literal giants one can imagine has passed away, rest in peace Viking

Ah, the @hckošice tactics.

It would be more like Zambia not being good enough, but getting a ton of help from other countries (for something unrelated), and then doubting whether they should enter because it'd be like presenting the tons of help from others as their own quality But alright, I got my answer already

1. Weightlifting, men's +109kg - Lasha Talakhadze (GEO) 2. Swimming, 1500m freestyle women - Katie Ledecky (USA) 3. Cycling, women's time trial - Chloe Dygert (USA) 4. Sport climbing, women's combined - Janja Garnbret (SLO) 5. Judo, men's 73kg - Shohei Ono (JPN) Dygert depends a little on how well she's recovered, but since she won the US nationals I'm assuming she's fine and then it's a matter of good luck to anyone in trying to beat her Followed an earlier example to leave out non-individual events, because this sounded more fun

Nothing is ever safe, but I'd go for this: 1. Women's road race --> Basically all four women have an excellent chance to win the gold. I hope it won't happen, but even a double or triple medal win is not unrealistic (although of course it's the road race, a ton can happen) 2. Women's time trial --> Basically the same sort of thing, although with Van der Breggen and Van Vleuten there's only two and there's always Dygert. I hope Dygert is all recovered and fit, in which case she's the clear favourite (but still a Dutch medal should be fairly safe). 3. Women's 1500/5000/10.000m (whichever Hassan runs) --> She's a gold medal threat in whichever event she chooses to run, and a nearly safe medal bet as well. Gold is a different thing of course, but it's hard to imagine three women beating her. Bonus: Men's mountainbike --> A pretty open field, but a 'normal' Van der Poel really should be a nearly safe medal threat. Forgot women's field hockey, that should be a fairly safe medal as well. Same for certain track cycling events, but there we'll have to wait and see which super round wheels the British will show up with

Very curious to see how this is going to go. According to manager Erzen, they've taken training data and such. It was only a matter of time until at least some suspicion would come to some sort of action, now let's see if something will come out of this.

Oh damn, I don't think anyone on this forum can challenge running a 400m under 49 seconds

Which Pogacar punished

Dutch team should be officially announced today.