The 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang

Forostar said:
Yeah. When my first child was born, I used my parental leave for one day in the week. When that was over, I didn't want to go back to working 5 again.
I changed it from 5 to 4 days. Less good financially, naturally. But a bit more "free" time is worth something as well.
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If you can afford it, go for it.
 
Anyway, the Germany vs ихтамнет final is so bizarre I'm seriously concerning getting up at 6 am on Sunday to watch it live.
 
Forostar said:
I can't judge that since speed skating does not have this advantage to try that out.

Some sports have two advantage to have a replacement.
Major advantage: competing at the Games.
Another one, however small: a chance to have a good performance.

Other sports do not have this advantage at all.
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You have made many points in the posts regarding this, and I'm not really sure what you are trying to get across. But it's not really important as long as we don't have a clear understanding of the following:
  • The IOC's rules regarding a country entering reserves. I don't really believe the IOC rules are different between e.g. speed skating and cross-country skiing (or alpine skiing, for that matter).
  • The policies of each participating country, at least the ones who are in a situation where including reserves in their squad is at all feasible; it clearly is for Norway in cross-country, and I would assume for Austria in alpine skiing as they have many athletes who are almost as good as the four they enter into any particular event. And, of course, the Netherlands in speed skating..
You also mention that the qualification is based on performance. That's obvious - and performance is the reason Petter Northug and Ole Einar Bjørndalen are not participating. They have not performed at the required level all season. But one thing is the IOC requirements. These are obviously not very strict, seeing as North Korea had two skiers in the men's slalom who were more than 20 s behind the leader - after one run. Another thing is what the national (e.g. Dutch) Olympic Committee require, and the policy they have for selecting their squad.

Discussing "advantages of one sport over another" is rather meaningless when we don't know what is down to the IOC and what is down to the national committees.

To conclude:

I'm not prepared to pursue this line of inquiry any longer :D I need to go to bed early to watch more sports tomorrow morning!
 
Forostar said:
Some do play in Scandinavia. Are leagues out there worse than the German? Hard to imagine.
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The Swedish league is better than the German league. The Danish and Norwegian hockey leagues are semi-professional and thus not nearly the same level. Sweden and Finland are on another planet when it comes to ice hockey.

As for the national teams, Germany is one of the teams that would normally be happy to just be in the quarter-final (pretty much like Norway, Switzerland, and in later years Slovakia who were really good in the late 90s). Canada have so many professional players that I'd say the ice hockey team is the most impressive German participant in Pyeongchang even if they do lose the final, if we take expectations into account.

I usually think of international ice hockey as Canada and Russia being a notch above Sweden, Finland, Czech Republic and the USA, and then you have the rest. A team outside those six reaching a final is sensational.
 
I’m with LC in that I’m happy for the Germans and I’d love to see more of them embracing hockey.
In terms of what this means in terms of where they rank as a hockey power it doesn’t mean anything at all.

700 of the top 1000 players in the world play in the NHL and about 95 per cent of the top 500.
That includes every national-team level Canadian and American and the vast majority of the same for Sweden, Finland, and to a slightly lesser extent Russia.

To put it in football terms, very few of those playing in in PyeongChang are Premier-league world-level players.
 
Very strong 50km from Ivo Niskanen today. Congrats to Ivo and Finland!

Poltoranin tried to follow. With 10 km to go, he was 3rd, about 1min30s behind. At finish he was 5:15 behind! Poor bastard.

Sundby with a disappointing 5th place, one worse than in Sochi.
 
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Really something to be satisfied about. 95 percent of 500 best ice hockey players not at the Games. I do not find the comparison with football a very good one, because there is the World Cup football (the biggest non-Olympic Games tournament in the world) that brings together the best of the best, nation wise. What's the point of doing something like that twice (and also per year!). Ice hockey world championships are annual and seen as even less important than winning Olympic Games. At least, I cannot imagine that Olympic Games have a lesser status than World Cup. Perhaps that's changing now.

The owners of the NHL clubs have put too many commercial conditions to the IOC and the Olympic movement. The Olympic movement cannot treat the owners of a commercial franchise of a national league better than an international sports federation or other professional leagues with regard to the Olympic Games.

Something else:

Norway has broken the record of winning the most medals at the Winter Games.

Canada still has the most golden medals: 14 (2010). Both Norway and Germany can still get equal (or break) that. With another cross country coming up I give Norway a good chance and I hope for a German stunt tomorrow.
 
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mckindog said:
I’m with LC in that I’m happy for the Germans and I’d love to see more of them embracing hockey.
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While I was proven wrong about the quality of the German hockey league (and freely admit it), I maintain that hockey is a big thing in Germany. Don't underestimate the support big German clubs such as Nuremberg and Berlin have in the country. It's very popular.
 
Forostar said:
Ice hockey world championships are annual and seen as even less important than winning Olympic Games. At least, I cannot imagine that Olympic Games have a lesser status than World Cup. Perhaps that's changing now.
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In hockey, the Olympic gold has come to be regarded as the premiere international achievement, since NHL players were allowed to go. The World Cup of Hockey, and it's predecessor the much better named Canada Cup, have been pushed by the NHL hard to achieve the same status as the Olympics, or even greater, because the NHL hates the IIHF and the Olympics. But nobody cares about the WCoH - it's so poorly regarded that they couldn't sell put the championship game in 2016....in Toronto.
 
LooseCannon said:
the NHL hates the IIHF and the Olympics.
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This sounds like cutting your nose off to spite your face. The Winter Olympics probably gives ice hockey its biggest global audience so stopping NHL players participating prevents the NHL from raising its own profile. Does ice hockey in Europe operate in the same fashion as NHL? As in with franchises where players sign contracts with the league.
 
I honestly don't know. And I agree with you - most hockey fans agree with you. But the NHL is probably going to get their way. They always do.
 
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