heywoodu

Yep, the amount of emergency services I heard at some point was a little extreme (for our little town), so I checked what was going on and saw they were all being called to a specific location. Until then I thought maybe it was part of a parade of trucks and agricultural vehicles that was on it's way from the next town over, decorated with lights and stuff.
 
Since I knew it was on the parade route, I was sure one of those big vehicles had hit people somehow (there were, besides the many vehicles, also two helicopters on the way, meaning it certainly wasn't about a single victim).
 
We picked our bikes and went to take a look, absolutely chaos in the area. Never saw so many services combined together, fire trucks from 20km away, ambulance after ambulance came racing by, people frantically trying to make way for them (the roads weren't really closed yet).
 
While there we heard someone who had been close say that the parade hadn't arrived yet and what seemed to have happened was that a car from the other side came onto the roundabout and simply never turned. "It's a massive drama over there, unbelievable", he said.
 
Quite quickly rumours started spreading of course, the first one turned out to be true: a middle aged (local) woman was behind the wheel and seems to have become unwell. Local security camera showed the car going at high speed right before the roundabout.
 
Plenty of rumours going around in terms of who were involved of course, and people keeping each other up to date to see if they know this or that family and such...
 
Never expected my little town to be big news in the Netherlands, even including some breaking broadcasts, live reporters and everything, damn. By far the biggest thing to happen here in my memory
 

Hamar isn't exactly fast neither
 
Like I said, that's fine though. It would be great to have Olympics on a relatively slow track, which makes for different kind of races but certainly no less interesting. 

I have scheduled the voting order draw for later today. I will be using a random generator to auto-generate the results. If anyone is interested, I have posted a ticket of the scheduled draw. There is no result available yet but will appear once the draw has passed the scheduled time.
 
https://www.randomresult.com/ticket.php?t=4047191GXV9CAS4M2

Who knows, maybe see you there  
 
I know I also have biathlon tickets but I have no idea which ones exactly, need to start putting things together. I know the women's sprint is among them so, if plans work out well, Bruna and I and my family (and her employees) all come and cheer for Baiba Bendika  

Please do not bring this idea to Sindo  

Please do not bring this idea to Sindo  

Please do not bring this idea to Sindo  

My first bulbes destroying in one move of the year done. needed only 4 attempts 
 

Pitty that bulbs dont appear on Android. 

has just delivered their votes which means that all nations have now voted and we have no disqualifications this year  
 
The voting window will officially end tomorrow (Friday) at midnight GMT after which I will post details about the voting order draw. It’s likely going to be a random draw from a random generator site to save time in this busy period. I will schedule the draw and post a ticket so users can view the result after the scheduled time. More to come on that on Saturday.
 
Thanks again to all participants  

For a 3rd ticket for Brazil, which would make her/our life a significant amount easier, yes
 
Whether or not she actually needs it will depend a lot on Jaqueline Mourao making or not making the A criterium (under 150.00 FIS distance points on 18/19 January).
 
Last time Brazil was 1 position too low to get a 3rd ticket, but I think this time more countries got the basic quota and so fewer tickets are available for the next steps in the allocation system. Which is an even bigger deal in the men's situation, where I believe it looks like not a single nation will even get to the maximum of 8 spots.

Serbia's Olympic Committee rejected its quota for 2022 and Liechtenstein is a maybe. They have rejected quotas in the past.

The FIS qualification table is quite slow to be updated, also after Israel's man qualified it took a little bit of time. She certainly got it without problems, so they should be added soon.

Just to update: I've certainly listened to everything more than once, just need to find a moment to rank them, but that should be fine  

I hope not, because what I'm hoping for is that the person I'm cooking dinner for at this moment will carry the flag, but yeah, Braathen exists so that's unlikely
 
One of my favorite Totallympics threads though anyway, always fun to see who is chosen

Where can I bet my mortgage, parents and intellectual property rights to anything I might ever invent (unlikely as that is to ever be relevant) on Lucas Braathen carrying Brazil's flag in the opening ceremony and Nicole Silveira carrying it in the closing ceremony?  (snow federation chooses for opening, ice federation chooses for closing in Brazil)

Play-off round fixtures:
 
Quarterfinals
 
  vs   /
 
  vs   /
 
  vs   /  @heywoodu 
 
  vs   /
 
 
13th-16th Place Semifinals
 
 -
 
 -

And remember the Olympic Paradox - it is slightly easier to get a medal at the Olympics than at a World Cup because in the Olympics the numbers of racers from the powerful nations are capped at 4.  

Sure, remove one of only two remaining snowboard discipline that are actually measurable and easy to see in terms of who wins. I guess having clear and easy to understand winners isn't urban enough anymore.
 
Although anyway PGS should go back to the old two-run format, because the current one is inherently unfair, but yeah, we all know that's not gonna happen and fairness is almost never a reason for changes in sports.

This is such an annoying thing at events like this. Like that guy who came on the podium with a speech in Spanish. I mean, no blame at all if you don't speak English, there's no real shame in that and that's fine, but if you don't....then don't go on a global stage and give a speech even if you're asked to, unless someone is there translating sentence by sentence.

I only kinda know Wayne Gretzky by name, don't think I ever heard or saw him really do anything, but man, for someone called 'The Great One' that sure was an underwhelming performance by him  
 
Pronounced half the countries like he had never even heard of them (which I assume is correct), and made it seem as though reading a card with a grand total of 4 countries on it was super difficult. Shaquille O'Neal and Aaron Judge at least clearly practiced the names in their pot. The full 'Islamic Republic of Iran' by Shaq for example, I feel like Gretzky would just have said 'I R Iran' and thought the I and R were a typo.

Andrea Bocelli is lucky, he doesn't need to watch this.

Andrea Bocelli is lucky, he doesn't need to watch this.

Well this was the most cringey speech humanity has ever seen.

Today I feel MAGA