I just don't think it would benefit the sport to have even more Norwegians, or whichever nationality is the dominating one at any point, be in with a chance of winning/finishing near the top.
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I just don't think it would benefit the sport to have even more Norwegians, or whichever nationality is the dominating one at any point, be in with a chance of winning/finishing near the top.
Maybe Bahrain can buy the best ibu/non top 4 WC athletes like they did with middle distance runners. They could afford excellent waxing facilities.
Stroemsheim and Dale + 2 is a *** strong team.
TBF Torstein Stenersen went to race for Sweden when they were bad a few years ago, after Ferry and Bergman retired but before Samuelsson and Ponsiluoma came along, and Lotte Lie is one of the many overspill athletes competing for Belgium - they also have Florent Claude and Maya Cloetens who transferred from France, and Julien Petitjacques from Italy, as well as of course having previously had Michael Rösch.
And there were a lot of repatriated Russians on the World Cup before the team was banned and continuing on. Looking at the last week's competition, across the World Cup and IBU Cup there are quite a lot of them still out there:
- The South Korean team is quite dependent on its Russian imports, with Timofey Lapshin and Ekaterina Avvakumova largely taking its starts on the World Cup. Anna Frolina may have retired but Aleksandr Starodubets is still knocking around. All of these transferred ahead of the 2018 Olympics. Frolina and Lapshin both had well-distinguished careers before the transfer. Lapshin is particularly controversial because he got to compete in both Pyeongchang and Zhangjiakou despite having a positive doping control noted in the McLaren report, while athletes like Uslugina who aren't even mentioned in the report were unable to compete.
- The entire Moldovan men's relay quartet (Mihail and Andrei Usov, Pavel Magazeev and Maksim Makarov) plus their women's team leader (Alina Stremous) and Makarov's wife Aliona Makarova (née Ivanova) are Russian imports. Magazeev is the only one to have had any noteworthy success for Russia though, appearing on a few IBU Cups many years ago.
- Romania' team includes Dmitry Shamaev and Elena Chirkova. Chirkova didn't have any IBU-accredited racing prior to the transfer, but she did race at the Universiade in 2019, winning two bronze medals. She married Russian domestic competitor Dmitry Ivanov a couple of years ago.
- Although she missed the racing in Ruhpolding sick, Daria Virolaynen is racing for Finland this season, after several years out. As you can probably guess from her married surname, though, her husband has Finnish roots and she's been living there since leaving the Russian team's orbit five years ago even though her sister was competing for the Russian team and her mother was a prominent pundit and talking head on the sport in Russia until her death last year.
- Lithuania's team includes Lidiia Zhurauskaite, a recent transfer (only this season). However in her defence, both her parents are Lithuanian and they moved to Murmansk for work during Soviet times.
- Perhaps most contentiously or courageously of all, depending on points of view we can't really get into on the board, the Ukrainian team includes long-time stalwart Nadiia Bielkina, who survived the cull of Russian-born talents in the Ukrainian women's team thanks to her actively helping fight the invasion.
The Ukrainians had been paying incentives to prospective Russian talents to transfer for several years, especially in their women's team which had been dependent on the same small group for many years, while Belarus (who are now in the same boat but have many Russian-born athletes of varying kinds) and South Korea were also definitely 'buying' a team. I suspect that the Moldovan team is along similar lines but it's largely a marriage of convenience at this stage as the level of competitor that they are picking up is nothing like as prominent as the likes of Lapshin (with three individual World Cup podiums to his name) or Frolina (a World relay champion who missed an individual Olympic medal by less than 2 seconds). The Romanian team's imports I believe were to do with the personal charges of a regional coach who was hired by the Romanian national team so brought some of his domestic team to race camps in Romania and they chose to stay. Zhurauskaite and Virolaynen I think is less about teams poaching talent and more about athletes who have a route to international competition and a far more convenient passport for travel taking up that option.
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Some of those obviously have closer connections to their adopted countries than others.
There's also Ukaleq Slettemark (as well as her brothers), who, although she proudly represents Greenland, obviously would want to be part of the Norwegian team if she had the level for it, and Anastasiya Kuzmina, who we will be making a comeback at the European Championships soon. And Campbell Wright has of course joined the US team this season.
There are some pragmatic issues involved: particularly for sprints in Athletics, Nordic XC, swimming and other sports with a discrete number of “lanes”; if you don’t set some kind of cutoff standard ( by time or by country) then they have to add more rounds of qualifying heats.
I think it's more about the clear cut double standards by those who took it as the gospel and turned more than one blind eye to those who had changed nationality...
Back to the sport, how bad will the conditions be in Oberhof?
Well, the thing is, the Lapshin positive was not an issue of questions of samples at Sochi or anything like that which is contentious. It was an honest to god positive test for a steroid of some kind at a Kubok Rossii race in December 2013 when he was on the outside trying to force his way into the national team in time for Sochi.
There are a lot of things about the McLaren report data that can be discussed, questioned, challenged and that raise concerns, but that needs to be discussed in the Clinic rather than here; the fact that the information in said report was a large part of what the decisions made about which Russians could compete in 2018 were based on, and people like Uslugina who aren't mentioned at all were forbidden from competing, but Lapshin - because it wasn't Russia who nominated him for the Games - was able to get through the net, was controversial at the time, and that was all I was saying there.
The whole thing is ‘it’s highly likely,’ ‘presumed’ and stuff like that. There’s no clarification, no research, just done on a whim. There’s a reason why the vast majority of the athletes were cleared of any wrongdoing, because there was no evidence, it was based on one very suspicious individual. Anyway, yes, moving to Oberhof…
Many athletes, like Ustiugov, Retivykh, Victor Ahn, Shipulin, Kriukov, etc were not allowed to go to Korea for no reason, their names were never on any list. That’s one of the reasons why I have 0 trust in that whole debacle. Cramer personally wrote to his compatriot Bach, asking for clarifications, and he never got a response. That’s all I am gonna say on that.
I don't recall the specifics with the XC team (assuming here you mean Sergei Ustiugov the skier and not Evgeny Ustyugov the biathlete) but I do know the vast majority of the report regarding the biathlon team. Shipulin, like many members of the men's World Cup team that year, had a number of tests unaccounted for so his name appears in the report, even if you may disagree with the conclusions. Just appearing in the report was not grounds for exclusion - Kaisheva is mentioned, albeit only in passing, and competed in Pyeongchang - but the reason I singled out Uslugina as the counter-example is that she was not mentioned at all.
I know individual is the most 'pure' but it makes terrible TV.
I wish they would just make it mass start and have them do 2 penalty loops per miss.
I wish they would just make it mass start and have them do 2 penalty loops per miss.
I heard the conditions in Oberhof is quite good now. It started snowing last week so the tracks will be fine and the surrounding will look like a winterlandscape. From what I understood it’s quite common, problem is they always want to compete in beginning of January.
Scandinavian athletes were disturbed by cancelled airlines because of bad weather so they”ll be late and some will miss the official training today. The Norwegians are expected to land in Frankfurt around 3pm today. I also heard the Norwegians had a lot of illness after the Tour.
Of course not, she got pushed more and more by the media as she rose to the top...happens to every athlete in every sport.In the interest of fairness, this isn't just an American thing. It's also what turned me off about Gabriela Soukalová, who also seemed very contrived and artificial in her media personality. In Jessie's defence, unlike Soukalová I think she genuinely is somewhat like the demeanour she outwardly portrays, but has it dialled up way past 11 to the point of artificiality and seeming forced. That's a character trait which I personally find a turn-off and consistently have done - it's a trait shared by many of the athletes I have most taken against over the years - and I also have a long-standing tendency to aggressively reject narratives I believe are being forced on me aggressively or too heavy-handedly, which the "what's good for Jess Diggins is good for cross-country skiing" camp in the media is definitely guilty of. People will forget because obviously I'm very much in the one camp regarding her this last few years, but once upon a time I will have been neutral regarding her, I didn't just wake up one day hating Jessie Diggins.
Nah, Grotian is the next German superstar. Even the mainstream media had picked up on her before her debut. Tannheimer is the next one after that, since although she certainly has been talked up by those in the know for quite some time now, her hype has mostly been confined to the specialist sites and sources so far
I've just had a quick look through FIS Insta page. All I can see is boy/girl, boy/girl...I was expecting 90% Diggins and 10% the rest of the field. It is noticeable how much more engagement the girl's posts get, compared to the boys, which mirrors everything about cross-country skiing right now which will hopefully change when Bolshunuv and his mates are back next season.
Libertine - you are a fantastic poster, you really are but along with 2 others on here, you dominate the forum with certain agendas against Diggins and the Americans and I consider this at best to be unhelpful reading(don't forget more people read than write) and at worst spoils the forum(which I think is the best English skiing forum out there).
We all come from different parts of the world, some are bitter about America's foreign policy etc. I get it but I couldn't care less about the personalities of people I don't know. Frida Karlsson could be the nicest girl in Sweden or the 3,465,823rd either way I only care about her skiing and the races she's in.
All peace and love from me.
that flight has already been postponed by another two hours now, so they look unlikely to arrive before the late evening.
The TV element is why it is held on the weekdays with the more crowd-pleasing events on the weekend days.
I vehemently oppose them making any more races Mass Start. I think the Mass Start is actually the least interesting biathlon format because it's the most formulaic and also because it has the fewest starters it's a regular self-fulfilling prophecy about who the entrants are. The Individual frequently has the highest number of starters.
It's highly popular with the Patrick Wintertons of this world because it means he only needs to know facts about the same 8-10 people at the front of every race and not fill air by talking about surprises, lesser names and so on like he has to in time trial formats, and I like that it exists as a format because it rewards different skillsets and does give absolute benefit to nerves of steel when shooting in traffic... but comparing the Individual to the Mass Start is like comparing an F1 sprint race to Le Mans. Le Mans is not about just watching the TV images, it's about digging through the timing screens, following multiple narratives simultaneously. In the Individual and the Sprint, there are people who would never get to start any mass start event for whom getting into the top 40 to get points, or getting to the top 60 to meet the pursuit cutoff, or similar goals, are all they can go for. We get more surprise wins, podiums and flower ceremonies in the Individual than any other format. Maybe they are better served on weekdays, but I think we need more of them.
Speaking of tv coverage, there's always a focus on here about Eurosport(English version) but what do the Scandanavians think of their coverage?
Anders Blomqvist with his 'yes, yes, yes' In English whenever a Swede picked up a cheap podium, followed by a chuckle, instead of the focus being on the winner
Who is the female commentator now in Sweden? I noticed she was interviewed by FIS before a couple of races and naturally only focused on the Swedes doing well...biased media is everywhere it seems although I read on Norwegian forums that Jann Post is professional.
Anders Blomqvist with his 'yes, yes, yes' In English whenever a Swede picked up a cheap podium, followed by a chuckle, instead of the focus being on the winner
Who is the female commentator now in Sweden? I noticed she was interviewed by FIS before a couple of races and naturally only focused on the Swedes doing well...biased media is everywhere it seems although I read on Norwegian forums that Jann Post is professional.
My stance on Diggins has nothing to do with America or its behaviour in the world, except inasmuch as Diggins' personal presentation and characteristics, and how she is presented by the commentary team and media departments, are shaped by her being American. It's great that you are able to put that aside, but I'm afraid I can't. A constant propaganda offensive that is hell-bent on forcing a narrative of who the audience is supposed to like and dislike is something that I have a history of aggressively rejecting.
I know that with, for different reasons, Sepp Kuss being my current bête noire on the PRR forum as well it may come across like I'm being anti-American, but it's just to do with those two people specifically; hell, last week I was absolutely cheerleading Sophia Laukli, who I really like and is legitimately one of my favourite skiers on the current World Cup. You may not have been here to see the times when it was Peter Sagan, Gabriela Soukalová, Lizzie Deignan or Petter Northug, but they similarly were forced down the audience's throat, and I rejected that narrative likewise.
One thing that did strike me, however, is that in American sports, there is a tendency towards home broadcasts because each market tends to deal with its own franchises, and in Europe that's simply not the case. If you're watching in, say, Nashville, you can expect that if you watch the Titans match, the commentators you see will be biased Titans fans and that's normal. I've had this discussion on the subject of hockey many times. Sure, some of the most biased commentators, like Jack Edwards on the Boston Bruins, will be mocked, but that's just what's expected of sports commentary in most quarters and many fans even say they would be upset if the commentators were replaced by a neutral team, because they like that the commentary team views things from a biased standpoint because it makes them more relatable to the man in the stands.
In Europe, a lot of the time it's simply not like that. Most commentaries on national broadcasters are usually expected to at least maintain an air of neutrality and while their biases regularly show in terms of who they choose to talk about, or the tone in which they talk of certain competitors or teams, the play-by-play guy is at least in theory supposed to call what is happening dispassionately. This happens increasingly less, especially in races where athletes represent the national team, but is at least supposed to be the case, and jingoistic celebration such as you mention with Blomqvist is usually criticised as such.
This is even more so the case when you have de facto international broadcasts which are syndicated to several countries, like how the British Eurosport commentary was used for Eurosport International for years due to English being the lingua franca of most international media. As a result, having a commentary team who are so openly cheering a single athlete or team, screaming "come on!" at them and "yes!" at other athletes' failures, as Patrick and Mike were doing when Andersson failed to best Diggins' time at the Worlds, is seen as flat-out unprofessional.
That isn't Diggins fault, when she's out there skiing she has no control over what commentators say. It's completely irrational to have hatred towards someone over things they can't control.
Mike and Patrick aren't commentators though, are they? They have no journalism background, they are simply there because of their background in the sport. When David Goldstrom used to be the commentator it was professional but when you effectively get fans commentating the end result is cheerleading...it is what it is.
Regardless and I'll repeat it again. Diggins has no control over Eurosport or how they commentate.
I think they should check JTB's rifle. I'm not sure it was humanly possible to hit all targets today. I also doubt Lægreid will get a better chance of winning this season than he had here.
Nice 7th place for Danilo Riethmüller, who only got the call this morning and had to drive to Antholz from Ruhpolding.
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