changchun sprints

Just finished watching Norwegian tv via p2p streaming of WC sprints in
China. That snow they put in the football stadium course looked kinda of
dirty sort of yellow. Chinese crowd were doing their duty to the party by
chanting and waving slogan banners on cue. Anyway Andy Newell looked like
he might finally get the top of the podium by qualifying 1st in the time
trial and winning his quarterfinal and semis. In the final he looked even
better by grabbing the first corner, while Bjorn Lind for some reason after
drifting wide just quits and starts touring along. I think he must've
broken his pole or something. Meanwhile the least likely guy I thought
because he hasn't did that much this season Thobias Fredriksson, starts
cranking it up with about 500 meters to go gradually pulling away.. I
think Newell needs to do more distance work because he keeps burning out in
the final rounds. As he's trying to hang on to second, the Swiss guy
Eigenmann puts it down the last 100 and sneaks his toe over putting Newell
back to third. Didn't get to see the slow motion replays because whoever
was feeding the p2p channel decided to log off so NRK1 just froze and
disappeared.

On the womens side Marit Bjørgen got back to her dominant wire to wire form
and stayed ahead of Becky Scott who just passed the other Norwegian girl
(Gjømle?.. Strøm Solli?) for second. It's going to be a dogfight for the
overall title all the way to Sapporo! Check out Ella Gjømle's red
speedsuit.. it has that wet shiney look.

Great news for Andy and the US. I would guess Andy has more top 10s this
year than the US team combined for the previous 15-20. Somewhat worrisome
that our sprint coach is leaving, I hope whoever they get as a replacement
doesn't try to change too much. This a nice way to be ending our season.

Dave


"shreddir" wrote in message
...
Just finished watching Norwegian tv via p2p streaming of WC sprints in
China. That snow they put in the football stadium course looked kinda of
dirty sort of yellow. Chinese crowd were doing their duty to the party
by chanting and waving slogan banners on cue. Anyway Andy Newell looked
like he might finally get the top of the podium by qualifying 1st in the
time trial and winning his quarterfinal and semis. In the final he looked
even better by grabbing the first corner, while Bjorn Lind for some reason
after drifting wide just quits and starts touring along. I think he
must've broken his pole or something. Meanwhile the least likely guy I
thought because he hasn't did that much this season Thobias Fredriksson,
starts cranking it up with about 500 meters to go gradually pulling away..
I think Newell needs to do more distance work because he keeps burning out
in the final rounds. As he's trying to hang on to second, the Swiss guy
Eigenmann puts it down the last 100 and sneaks his toe over putting Newell
back to third. Didn't get to see the slow motion replays because whoever
was feeding the p2p channel decided to log off so NRK1 just froze and
disappeared.

On the womens side Marit Bjørgen got back to her dominant wire to wire
form and stayed ahead of Becky Scott who just passed the other Norwegian
girl (Gjømle?.. Strøm Solli?) for second. It's going to be a dogfight for
the overall title all the way to Sapporo! Check out Ella Gjømle's red
speedsuit.. it has that wet shiney look.

shreddir wrote:
while Bjorn Lind for some reason after
drifting wide just quits and starts touring along. I think he must've
broken his pole or something.

Yes he broke his pole, and was waving for a new one, but when a guy
came running with a new pole there seeemed to be some problem with the
handing over, Lind got no pole and finished the race with one pole.

You can se a picture of the failed handing over at
http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?...&lpo s=lasMer
, and if you click at "Se herrfinalen" under the Video-headline, you
caan see the whole race.

Meanwhile the least likely guy I thought because he hasn't
did that much this season Thobias Fredriksson,
He got ill before the olympics and it was very uncertain if he was
coing to recover fast enough for the Olympic team sprint together with
Bj=F6rn Lind, but he recovered enough for a gold there and a Bronze in
the sprint finals and now some good results after the olympics also.

Good for the sport that americans like Newell and Scott make good
results!

But most of all I am happy for Anders S=F6dergren for making his first
world cup win in the only long and tough race of the year in
Holmenkollen. (With tough I mean that it was tough tracks, individual
start, full speed all way and no big crowd of skiers keeping the speed
down and saving themselves for a sprint finish.) Big thanks to
Holmenkollen for keeping the individual start. =3D)

wrote:
But most of all I am happy for Anders Södergren for making his first
world cup win in the only long and tough race of the year in

That was really nice.

Holmenkollen. (With tough I mean that it was tough tracks, individual
start, full speed all way and no big crowd of skiers keeping the speed
down and saving themselves for a sprint finish.) Big thanks to
Holmenkollen for keeping the individual start. =)

Us norwegians being xc traditionalists ('skating? we don't want no
stinking skaters to mess up our sport!') I fully believe the
Holmenkollen 50 K will be the last old-style event on the world cup
circuit, even though we've been forced to accept that it will have to
alternate between classic and skating. :-)

Terje
--
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"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"