Nordic Skiing/Biathlon Thread

[Samu Cuenca]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

[tobydawq]

Ouch!

 

[Bavarianrider]

Oh boy, someone booked his ticket to the Gulag.

 

[Silhouette]

Latypov being sent to the Ukrainian front lines tomorrow.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

QFM would probably have been beaten by Sjåstad if he had shot clear anyway, but still a Norwegian win is like watching paint dry.

 

[BigCoward]

Wtf? I went to the toilet and came back and it was a different race.

 

[Silhouette]

QFM would probably have been beaten by Sjåstad if he had shot clear anyway, but still a Norwegian win is like watching paint dry.

If you think this relay was like watching paint dry then I don't think biathlon is the sport for you.

 

[KZD]

Oh boy, someone booked his ticket to the Gulag.

Lol exactly my thoughts. In the old times he would be guaranted to go there. But I feel for him, at least he has already an individual medal.

A word about Christiansen that despite not being in great shape shows that he is can handle the nerves like very few and Johannes Boe that together with Loginov was clearly the fastest man on the tracks today.

 

[BigCoward]

If you think this relay was like watching paint dry then I don't think biathlon is the sport for you.

There is an unnecessary amount of hate on here for the Norwegians. Like there is for the British in the cycling forum.
Not without justification in some cases but there is nothing unlikeable about the Norwegian Biathlon team as far as I can see.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

If you think this relay was like watching paint dry then I don't think biathlon is the sport for you.

I'm talking about Norwegian relay wins in general. But yeah being a fan of the underdogs have always been problem for me in biathlon since I started following the sport in 2005

Not that I have anything particular against the Norwegian biathletes themselves, and after the two last Olympics they were probably due a win here, but it was a very unimpressive fashion to do it in.

 

[BigCoward]

Karma always comes through. That will teach you to poison kids.

 

[Aimar16]

Is there a reason why there are so many biathlon events at the Olympics? Usually the same people win medals in both men's and women's events. So I guess there's not much variable between the events.

 

[Bavarianrider]

Is there a reason why there are so many biathlon events at the Olympics? Usually the same people win medals in both men's and women's events. So I guess there's not much variable between the events.

They have a big lobby that`s all. It is a joke really. Every competition is basically the same. It totally devalues the results.
Sprint
Individual
Mass Start
Relay

Pursuit and Mixed relay really should not be at the Olympics.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

A race like this is more likely to garner dislike for Norway winning simply because Norway winning is the 'safe', 'boring' result on paper, and so when they open the door for people and create a surprisingly exciting race - then others fail to capitalise and the norm is reasserted at the last, it can result in a more negative reaction than if they'd just all gone out there, produced their best biathlon and dominated a boring race, because while it may not be very entertaining, if that happens, you just shrug your shoulders and say, well, that was always a possibility looking at their team.

It's like those races where a predictable, dominant champion like Martin Fourcade shoots 80% and opens the door to everybody else, but nobody takes the opportunity and Fourcade wins anyway. It's a more entertaining race, but people that don't support Fourcade will often be more frustrated by the outcome because they had reason to hope for something unpredictable and different, only to have that yanked away at the last second.

That's where I think Samu is coming from. Not saying the race itself was boring, but that the outcome is.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

They have a big lobby that`s all. It is a joke really. Every competition is basically the same. It totally devalues the results.
Sprint
Individual
Mass Start
Relay

Pursuit and Mixed relay really should not be at the Olympics.

Disagree on the former. Sprint and Pursuit should pay one set of medals as the Sprint sets the grid for the Pursuit.

Oh, and as well as the lobby, they have big audience figures. That tends to help. Although saying a sport is overrepresented in its number of medals for similar formats when the board's primary function is to discuss cycling might be considered a little hypocritical given the current track program, and could only be more so if we were a swimming board.

 

[BigCoward]

Or

Disagree on the former. Sprint and Pursuit should pay one set of medals as the Sprint sets the grid for the Pursuit.

Or reduce the gaps for the pursuit so nobody loses more than a minute

 

[Silhouette]

I don't think the pursuit makes sense. It just gives the guys who did a good sprint an added advantage in a race that is similar to the mass start.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I don't think the pursuit makes sense. It just gives the guys who did a good sprint an added advantage in a race that is similar to the mass start.

On the regular world cup it does - 60 people start the pursuit whereas only 30 start the Mass Start. Since in a regular World Cup, 25 of the Mass Start places are set by World Cup overall points, it would quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy who its entrants are because they get to do more races because of qualifying for the Mass Start. Also, fewer pursuits and more mass starts would make it less worthwhile for smaller teams to send athletes to the World Cup to contest the sprint because for some of them just qualifying for the pursuit is a win. You can frequently see exciting races where World Cup contenders are way down the field after a bad sprint, or people who've never done so well in a sprint suddenly have to deal with pressure shoots that they've never faced before. At the Olympics and World Championships, however, where only the medals count, it's a bit of a misnomer, and it is of course somewhat exacerbated here by a combination of altitude and time gaps from the sprint meaning that in the women's race Røiseland had enough of a lead that she could have made more mistakes than she did and still won comfortably, and in the men's race the field was essentially reduced to about five very early on and the rest, because these races don't count for the overall World Cup and they weren't in the hunt for medals, were competing over little more than pride and maybe trying to forge a case for relay selection. But then that applies to the majority of the field in XC too.

 

[Silhouette]

...

Very good point. I suggest the starting list for the mass start should be the top 20 in the world cup + the 10 best performers besides those 20 in the last competition.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

The mixed realy gives some teams better chances of getting good results, if they don't have four equally good biathletes of the same sex.

On the regular world cup it does - 60 people start the pursuit whereas only 30 start the Mass Start. Since in a regular World Cup, 25 of the Mass Start places are set by World Cup overall points, it would quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy who its entrants are because they get to do more races because of qualifying for the Mass Start. Also, fewer pursuits and more mass starts would make it less worthwhile for smaller teams to send athletes to the World Cup to contest the sprint because for some of them just qualifying for the pursuit is a win. You can frequently see exciting races where World Cup contenders are way down the field after a bad sprint, or people who've never done so well in a sprint suddenly have to deal with pressure shoots that they've never faced before. At the Olympics and World Championships, however, where only the medals count, it's a bit of a misnomer, and it is of course somewhat exacerbated here by a combination of altitude and time gaps from the sprint meaning that in the women's race Røiseland had enough of a lead that she could have made more mistakes than she did and still won comfortably, and in the men's race the field was essentially reduced to about five very early on and the rest, because these races don't count for the overall World Cup and they weren't in the hunt for medals, were competing over little more than pride and maybe trying to forge a case for relay selection. But then that applies to the majority of the field in XC too.

They could change the rules, so that the startlist for the mass start was only determined by results during the Olympics, now that it don't affect the WC standings.
Also I think they should allow people who just missed out on the top 60 in the sprint to replace those who drop out of the pursuit.

But perhaps one day they'll replace the sprint with the super sprint to create more "exciting" races.

 

[Aimar16]

they have big audience figures.

I thought it was a niche sport and the casual viewer doesn't really find it interesting because in the end someone always wins by a big margin. But I guess it attracts well paying sponsors as wealthier countries like Germany and Norway have had success in this sport.

 

[Silhouette]

Johaug is not going to race the team sprint. Good decision.

Valnes + Klæbo
U.Weng + Falla

Weakest teams since, well, the beginning of team sprints. I guess the hope is Valnes has improved after some rest.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I thought it was a niche sport and the casual viewer doesn't really find it interesting because in the end someone always wins by a big margin. But I guess it attracts well paying sponsors as wealthier countries like Germany and Norway have had success in this sport.

All wintersports are niche sports. Even hockey, which in the US is a distant 4th of the 'big four' leagues. Biathlon is a very big TV sport in the winter in much of central Europe and a few years ago was even the #3 TV sport on major channels after football and F1 in Germany, though it may have tailed off a bit now that Germany aren't so prominent at the head of the field. It draws huge crowds throughout central Europe and Russia however and is much bigger in terms of TV audience than XC in recent years, which has really been hurt by the loss without replacement of various nations' ageing vets as countries like Germany, Czech Republic, Canada and Poland become also-rans.

 

[BigCoward]

Riiber is a freak. 44 second gap without any practice. But surely if anything has suffered with his quarantine, it will be his ski speed.

Though the people at 45-90 seconds aren't particularly strong skiers.

 

[roundabout]

Riiber is a freak. 44 second gap without any practice. But surely if anything has suffered with his quarantine, it will be his ski speed.

Though the people at 45-90 seconds aren't particularly strong skiers.

It was impressive, but he actually had at least 2 jumps of practice - he was a trial jumper in the specialist team event yesterday and there was a trial round today.