heywoodu

Gravel world championships And ski jumping Summer Grand Prix, just finished catching up on an insane season of Red Bull Rookies Cup, still lots of NASCAR to catch up with and with this weekend being a bit of a slow one in terms of live sports (and the MotoGP/2/3 things being in Japan and so being done and dusted by 9am my time), it's so far been a weekend with lots of catching up

To be fair, the only way to make the qualifying day shorter is by allowing fewer athletes and I really don't think that's a good trade-off for the sport. Qualifying day can be the biggest spectacle one can imagine, it's still not going to draw amazing viewing numbers anyway, since it's basically just laying the foundation for the weekend. Ice resurfacing definitely takes a while if done properly, if pushing it they could maybe get it done just under 15 minutes or so. I'm a little afraid it goes the way of athletics, where things are pushed more and more into ever shorter formats. Shorttrack days and sessions can only realistically be made shorter if they spread a World Cup out over 4 instead of 3 days, but it's not like Thursday is going to be a massive audience day.

The only thing I can think of that has gotten in the way can be geo-restrictions, like the Fridays being available on YouTube, but not the Saturdays and Sundays, preventing new people from really getting into it. Somehow I doubt a new format means it will be made more welcoming for new viewers though...

But what can be improved? Broadcasting has for years already been excellent, with races that are quite clear to follow and fine graphics that have all we need. How is "Suzanne Schulting for the Dutch Lions!" instead of "Suzanne Schulting from the Netherlands!" going to make it a better 'broadcast product'?

It's also just unnecessary Reactions I've seen so far from the top skaters here mostly come down to: "Yeah, whatever"

I don't think so, athletes will still compete for their nations, it's just that the nations have some US-sports kind of nickname and won't be announced as the actual nation anymore.

Ah, hadn't seen the arrow to go to page 2. I assume that means they make a 'nickname' thingy for every country that has at least a single athlete participating... Ice spiders and wolves and eagles and lions and hussars and vikings and then there's the Singapore....Gazelles

I wonder under which name the many athletes who aren't from one of these 14 nations will race?

Holy moly, look at the averages of Gary Anderson at Players Championship 24 earlier this week: https://tv.dartconnect.com/event/pdcpc24e24/matches 104.22, 106.92, 111.03, 114.41, 108.78......aaaaand then loses in the semis against Wessel Nijman of all people Ritchie Edhouse, meanwhile, with a 120+ average. https://recap.dartconnect.com/matches/66fe9221ce749eeaec57c54a?_gl=1*12hbqgv*_ga*MzM0NTUyMC4xNzA0NjUwNDM4*_ga_CBBJ7VXYJN*MTcyODA2NzUyMi42NS4xLjE3MjgwNjc3NDkuMzEuMC4w

Before Oslo That was never really different though, maybe with 1 or 2 days more than this time, but that's about it.

Well in that case they already missed a semi

But even Oslo? The Oslo 50k was basically the number one big event on the annual calendar.. As for Falun: I wonder if it will make the field smaller or just 'weaker'. Important for the Olympic qualification..

I genuinely wonder if ski mountaineering is honestly more popular in terms of audience. Cyclocross quite certainly isn't Although I believe the season is about to start, so Belgian TV will be busy making it look big again

Yet I'm still looking forward to it, it's been way too long as always

Meanwhile, Iran killed a Palestinian civilian on the West Bank last night (and lightly injured two Israelis) in a 180 missile attack, which - like in April - seems to have ended up being not much more than somewhat annoying and damaging a few military buildings.

Plus losing one of the classic winter sports in Nordic combined would be yet another disaster. Like it's not going downhill faster than Marco Odermatt already.

And considering Lappartient is basically known as having 'Conflict of Interest' as his middle name....yeah.

What nonsense is this? And Tour de Ski only in Italy...meh. It was such a cool event, years ago.

Rather negative Both towards Vollering and towards the coach, who has been making a mess of this for years now (like Tokyo). Vollering literally said "it was not good for me that Markus and Vos were still in the front towards the end" One of the most well-known journalists (albeit a bit of a drama queen, but in this case, he's right): "Absurdly bad race by Vollering. Unbelievable." An entire analysis titled "Vollering only thought of herself and threw away and almost certain Dutch medal": https://www.wielerflits.nl/nieuws/demi-vollering-dacht-alleen-aan-zichzelf-en-verspeelt-vrijwel-zekere-wk-medaille-voor-nederland/ Vollering: "They were all riding just to make me lose" https://www.gelderlander.nl/video/productie/vollering-mij-laten-verliezen-wk-zurich-772648?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F The 100th time Vollering shows she should simply not be in a team like this. It is always trouble, every single time. We need a team with like 6 Marianne Vos clones, she has the experience, she can read a race like absolutely nobody else in the world can and she plays her role, whether that's the team captain or working for someone else, without complaining and to the fullest extent. Vollering is the exact opposite of Vos. Vollering rides for Team Vollering, which consists of Demi Vollering. No matter what.

Massive win indeed, a 80+ kilometer solo in the world championships, damn (I mean, Sivakov jumped with him to try and help him of course, but couldn't do anything but sit in his wheel until he got dropped )

If even Erdogan calls you a psychopath, you're probably been....bad.

Meanwhile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_al-Assad

Sure, some things are simply historical events retold with a kind of fantasy layer over it, to make it more appealing to read and/or - most importantly - to put some lessons into it, which is fine (and which is the main way to read most religious texts, as 'lessons' and messages by the writers instead of actual historical facts). But let's not pretend that things like Moses splitting the sea or the entire exodus have a significant historical basis, based on actual evidence. Anyway, like I said: I'm well aware people who believe the religious book of their choosing is a historical book aren't going to ever believe otherwise, I grew up in a town full of similiarly minded people

I know religious people are definitely never going to admit most of the stories have no historical basis at all, that's fine. Anyway, unless one can prove they're a direct relative of the cavemen of tens of thousands of years ago in this specific area, there is just no claiming it as "our land" based on nothing.

Half of those things, if not more, are simply stories though. One may believe them or not, fine, but those aren't really reasons to claim a land. That way anyone can claim it if they have some old story that says so, and we end up in exactly the same situation.