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Faster

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Everything posted by Faster

  1. It has been a pretty disappointing that so far there are very few new teams. I know there will be in Africa with Algeria and Cameroon eliminated and Ghana all but. But still right now we are looking at Saudi Arabia (ick), Egypt and Iceland as not in the last World Cup qualifiers.
  2. There are mechanisms in Canada and the United Kingdom for peaceful separations. Spain is hell-bent on the idea of one indivisible 'nation'. Honestly the idea of another new nation in Western Europe that wasn't named Flanders or Wallonia was unthinkable a year ago. The appetite for an independent Catalonia was never there to a tipping point. Now you have a situation were the central government is creating an us-vs-them situation, pushing Catalans to pick sides. The majority of Catalans in that situation will pick their own side and not the side of the unreasonable Spanish state. If Madrid had accepted a referendum a year or two ago, allowed it to happen and it failed there would not be this issue now. because a year or two ago the referendum would have failed. Now, Catalonia and Spain are edging towards an ugly armed conflict.
  3. If the IOC can guarantee at least a billion dollars for Calgary to help finance the Games and Calgary can get the Flames arena down, this is a no-brainer. Calgary won't have any issues with ticket sales, there won't be the deficient venue legacy and there is already a playbook for the organizers to follow to get the country behind the Games. And I already thought the Liberals had signaled their support?
  4. You heard it here first, China's second city that will be swallowed by the ocean by the end of the century will be your 2032 host. Since it seems that having a Disneyland is now a requirement to host.
  5. There are people pushing for it. I would say, when is the last time a person made the leap from a Mayor's office to the White House, but the Orange Clown of Stupidity. Now the task for the IOC is to get a Western country over the finish line for a winter games. I am sure the preference would be for it to be Austria/Switzerland/Norway/Germany over Canada but they might have to take what they can get. Maybe the COC should get together with their Norwegian/Swiss/Austrian counterparts and devise a double award for 2026 and 2030.
  6. No one can answer the question; is this McDonald's not wanting to be associated with the Olympics any longer or is this McDonald's not being able to afford the sponsorship any longer because of the current business struggles they have been having?
  7. I do wonder what could have happened with a longer campaign like the one Canada had a few years ago. Another 2 weeks of good Labour campaigning could have done a lot of interesting things. Honestly I do not think this election result is the doom and gloom that people are making it. I actually think that the weakened position of May and the destruction of UKIP will lead to a non-Brexit Brexit. It will also likely lead to another election in 18ish months. But c'est la vie. I think there is a lot of positives out of this election: - emboldened labour - high youth engagement - took the piss right out of Scottish independence - weakened the hard Brexit position
  8. Oh hell, this is too good. Though it really does show how biased the electoral map is towards the Conservatives in the UK. Only about 2% separates Cons from Lab and there is a dramatic difference in seats. The only way the Cons govern with some stability is with the support of DUP. Lord help y'all. Btw why does Northern Ireland have to be so difficult. Can't they vote for regular parties?
  9. Spoken like people that have never played the game. Mixed curling is a lot different to men's and women's. Just like men's and women's are different. More power to the men's game, more finesse to the women's. Similar to almost every other team sport. Biggest issue was that mixed curling was added to give smaller curling nations the chance to compete in the Olympics. Once it became an Olympic sport the bigger curling nations started to take it seriously. Only Finland qualified for mixed without qualifying another team and they are Olympic medalists in men's. Hungary a world champion in mixed didn't even come close to qualifying.
  10. Canada qualified in mixed curling today. That is going to be some interesting qualification. I am pretty sure the Canadian curling association is going to discourage someone from qualifying in both. But you will have a lot of disappointed curlers come December looking at the mixed qualification in January as their Olympic chance.
  11. I am still not a huge fan of this. So Canada/Mexico/USA would get half of CONCACAF's qualification spots. I can see the games of importance being staged exclusively in the USA. But I think that if this were to go through that Mexico should get the opener, USA the final and Canada the 3rd place. I'd rather see Canada/USA do a joint bid to host the 2027 Rugby World Cup.
  12. I am not a fan of this idea. If it was joint it should be Canada-USA or USA-Mexico. All three is just too much. I'd assume that it would be Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal from Canada. Guadalajara, Monterrey and Mexico City from Mexico. And your pick of 8 of; Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, New York, Atlanta, Charlotte, Miami, Orlando, New Orleans, Nashville, Dallas, Houston, San Antonia, Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix. I think I just provided the reasoning for no joint bid.
  13. It does seem odd. In a year when realistically only the USA is a serious contender to make a joint bid with the other big countries of North America. I am guessing there is FIFA politics are at work here. From a logistics point of view this would be a crappy World Cup for fans. Mexico City to Montreal to Los Angeles anyone?
  14. So 17 skaters in figure skating. Highest qualified nation and given the results Canada should be favoured for the Team Trophy. Chan needs to clean up his long program and D/R need to recover and rework their programs to be more inline with the judging.
  15. A little surprised by speed skating since the consensus is that Canada is sending a stronger team to Pyeonchang then was sent to Sochi.
  16. Biathlon: 5 men, 5 women; improvement of 2 over Sochi Curling: 1 women's team, would take a miracle for the men to not qualify Figure Skating: 3 pairs; looking good to send 3 ladies, 3 ice dance and probably 2 men unless Chan get get into the top 2. Hockey: men's and women's team. It is hockey.
  17. The only downside of Calgary hosting the 2026 Games is that Nenshi won't be the mayor. Hopefully by then he is the Prime Minister. As for the East/West divide. Around the time of Atlanta/Sydney it was fairly even in Canada between the winter and summer. With Vancouver and Sochi, there is a massive slant to the winter now. I think that if you did a cross-country survey. Support for Calgary 2026 would be much higher then Toronto 2028. Also from a political standpoint. The Trudeau Liberals have a lot to gain from supporting a Calgary bid.
  18. I think most Canadians would rather see Calgary host a Winter Olympics compared to Toronto hosting a Summer. I certainly would. I also think of it this way. 2020 - Tokyo 2022 - Beijing 2024 - Paris 2026 - Calgary 2028 - Los Angeles 2030 - hopefully things settle down enough in Europe and in the IOC to have a traditional country host. That gives the IOC 13 years of certainty. 13 years to rework the public image, to rebuild the brand and figure out how the Movement is going to function in our brave new world.
  19. Vancouver could have been a disaster if not for one very important thing; VANOC spent a considerable amount of time and energy in getting the whole country invested and interested. Even than it wasn't really until the feel good story of Alexandre Bilodeau winning the first gold medal that it became what we remember. Pyeongchang is probably going to fall into the category of Nagano and Torino.
  20. Everything I have seen is that no matter who faces le Pan in the final round, they will win. Macron is probably the 'best' candidate to begin with.
  21. I've thought about that, but it has come a lot more into focus when you have Governors in California, Colorado, New York, Mass etc and than the Mayors of LA, Chicago, NYC and Boston publicly stand up to Trump. There is just no obvious choice like Obama was for 2008. I would like to see Andrew Cuomo or Deval Patrick but I think neither are likely.
  22. Is it sad that I am already looking for potential Democratic candidates for 2020. Hopefully Democrats will be intelligent enough to pick a Governor or Mayor instead of another senator.
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