Recent content by Squire

It's the case for the Finns as well, and Sweden to a large degree. But Finland have never really recovered from the Lahti scandal in 2001 for some reason.

Skiing was never really a professional sport, so that structure never developed. Proper international season-long competition didn't really start until the 70s and 80s (FIS World Cup since 1981). Until then it was mostly an Olympic sport and there was also the annual world championships. Most...

Let's hope the illness that forced him out of Algarve doesn't hamper him. That's exactly how he lost form for the classics last year.

The interest in cross-country skiing has dropped quite significantly in Norway too in recent years, both in terms of recruitment and viewership. I would guess partly because of the Norwegian dominance making the sport boring, partly because of a lack of interesting characters (Klæbo is a Temu...

Yeah, he definitely still has many good opportunities. But him becoming a monster pick is more unlikely without any meaningful TDU points. And it's also worrying that this is the first season where he's not nuclear from the start. He only looked really good in the Cadel race, without any points...

A perfect race for him. Glorious solo incoming on the Su Pradu climb!

All hail Arnaud De Lie! :D Feels like I need something similar this time. O'Connor is extremely worrying, and I had also banked on a bunch of early season Buitrago points that never materialized. I'm keeping up somewhat with the front runners so far, so hopefully I might stay in position to...

If I had picked him, I'd be very unhappy with this week of course. But I'm still worried that he'll be a thermonuclear pick. It's not like he's suddenly going to be a bad climber for the rest of the season. His 3000 point seasons also had some spells of non-thermonuclear level. He's at 500...

LOL, didn't see this until now. When you mentioned that some of the climbs I requested would be on the best-of-the-year list, the Najar one wasn't what immediately came to mind. :D This is glorious. Now I think you really should look at Gabrovski's Elmali too! So I guess Padun 2021 will be the...

Rather average week for me. Some decent things and some bad things. Positives: Carr into profit and looking good for some more farming. Nordhagen, Vlasov, Van Eetvelt, Seixas, Laporte for some okay but not earth-shattering points. Remco dropped like a stone. Poole not looking like he's going to...

Helped a lot by almost flawless pacing, wasn't it? Almeida doing his best Rubiera/Heras impersonation, then Riccitello, then Seixas, then straight into an Onley/Ayuso sprint.

Does Gloag's 5th today make this a correct prediction? :D

Widar not looking great.

And the chase not doing a good job of chasing. Lots of looking around.

Half of the chasing group getting on with it, and the other half doing all sorts of group 2 shenanigans.