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[sports-perspective-blog]

Biathlon world cup has already started last weekend, but the first single race was only today. Men run 20km individual and Martin Fourcade won as usual) But why I picked this event for my blog. The point is in the previous seasons Martin showed stunning performance, crushed all the opponents when only a few of them can defy his leg time, but nobody can resist his composure and accuracy during the shooting in the combine with the swift run. Today was the different one. A lot of athletes were faster than him and he had almost lost his leadership before he crossed the finish line.

 And that made me think we’ll not see another sublime and exceptional season by Fourcade and finally will get a dramatic battle for the world cup. Frankly speaking, I miss it a lot. Gazing on how one perfect athlete devastates everybody’s ambitions and expectations really impressive but isn’t interesting in words of competition’s intensity of emotions.

 I deem Samuelsson and J. Boe will be the main opponents for Martin and this rivalry will bring us lots of spectacular moments and maybe even photo finishes.  

[sports-perspective-blog]

 F1 2018 season is over. We’ve got the new 5-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, who also broke the point record which was set by Sebastian Vettel in 2013. Lewis’s been showing an incredible level of patience and concentration for the whole season. Only one retirement in 21 races, 11 wins, and 17 podiums. He literally smashed his main rival from Ferrari and proved he’s the best in the best in the peloton right now.

 What do I think about this season? Obviously not one of the most intensive seasons so far, Lewis has got a solid advantage since GP in Germany and almost left 0 opportunities for Seb to strike back. Nevertheless, this season was saturated and imbued with unforgettable racing battles, profound performances, devastations and sensational results.

 I want to start with the best battles. And 100% Max Verstappen participated in most of it. He’s shown a few stupendous races when he managed to compete with Mercedes even having such an unstable car. Of course, Max made a few mistakes and the Brazilian's one has cost him victory, but he’s never backed down and always tried to perfume as it was his last race. It’s really remarkable to see we still have racers who want to race only for the win, not just for being “one of”. I’m more than sure this ability to skip the obstacles and race in the pedal to the metal mode was honed for years and probably ingrained even in his childhood by his father. His races have some semblance with Senna’s ones. Impeccable, ruthless, talented, swift, I can carry on, but it’s only a matter of time and competitive car when his ascension to F1 title begins.  

 Going on, I’ve come to my second part – devastations. And I’ll split this “title” for Ferrari and Red bull racing teams. You probably wonder why second and third team deserved such a pitiful position. Ferrari as an aperitif. I’m a huge Ferrari’s fan and I’ve cheered for them since 2003, but their strategies are something “ingenious”. I don’t want to be extremely critical, but they have tremendous budgets, 500+ workers and almost every time some unexpected situations occurred on track, they failed. At least 5 Kimi Räikkönen’s races were destroyed by Ferrari’s strategical division. Rain, tire types, pit-stop windows – all of that are extremely weak for the team competing for the world championship. Only in Austin when Lewis almost had become a world champion, they managed to develop the winning strategy. The second frustration for me was Red Bull. Adrian Newey made exceptional aerodynamics as usual, but their engine and electronics had worn off multiple times. From the team who could defy Mercedes at the end of 2017, Red Bull found themselves as a team competing mostly with own car rather than opponents.  God sake, they changed motor supplier and agreed on a deal with Honda. Definitely, Honda hasn’t shown grounded results and powerful or robust engine with Mclaren, but Red Bull had to change something and they did.

 Ultimately, I’ve come to the sensation. And most of F1 would choose Charles Leclerc’s performance, but as for me, Valtteri Botass’ 5th place was like a tube of cold water. Only 8 podiums, 0 wins, and 161 points behind his teammate Lewis. Awful for a driver who had the fastest car in the peloton. Valtteri struggled the whole season, he made unusual mistakes, been slower on tracks where he astonished everyone in the previous seasons. Horrifying nosedive which can end his Mercedes’ career after next season if he continues to race like it was in 2018.

 That’s all I’ve had on my mind, hope you enjoyed my quick F1's season recap😊

[sports-perspective-blog]

Thought the whole last week what to choose for the start and decided the first ski jumping competition in 2018/2019 would be the best option.

 It’ll be the 15th season in a row I’ll watch ski jumping, so it’s kind of a small anniversary and I’ve thought it’s a good reason to begin with SJ. Wisla’s hill in my perspective suits much better than Ruka. It has balanced wind conditions and fewer chances for a stage to be canceled. You can notice Ruka was replaced by Klingenthal as a season opener before Wisla, but it didn’t work out as well.

 Season 2018/19 brought us the new stage winner Evgeniy Klimov, so it’s going to become a tradition to get a new winner at the beginning of the season.  Evgeniy proved his performance in summer wasn’t a piece of luck and conquered the winter with 1 hit. My biggest congratulations to him, but I want to ponder about season’s favorites and possible disappointments.

 Kamil Stoch’s still in the great shape and performs well even at the start, but other “favorites” made me think it’s going to be a hard year for most of them. Johansson, Kraft, Freitag, Tande – all of them were demolished in Wisla, of course, figuratively. Schlierenzauer’s promised increasing of his results, but still can’t manage to make at least top30 and he’s determination make me wonder “is he doing everything right or maybe it’s already time to end”. I definitely understand 1 stage isn’t representative, but a few of them will be. And I’m more than sure at least half of the mentioned people will fail again.

 I was extremely surprised by Ryoyu Kobayashi, he’s shown a few good results at the end of the previous season, but I considered that more a good coincidence than a statement to defy world cup top10. He made a tremendous first jump, only 1.5m behind the hill’s record of 139m Stefan Kraft set in 2013 and I deem if he were a bit luckier, he could win the first place. Another “surprise” was Timi Zajc who trampled down most critics and got the 5th place, highest in the world cup so far.

 It’s not the first season when lots of favorites showed a frustrating result, I remember Ahonen, Morgenstern, Amman and other stupendous jumpers who began to show top jumps only in January and failed the early season stages. And I can go on coming up with the set of stipulations and excuses why Wisla’s performance was so unexpected, but I think 2018/19 will have a much more different scenario we’ve had in the most of all 2010s’ seasons when one sportsman ramped up his form too fast and no one can defeat him.

 I’ll definitely come back to SJ season in a few weeks to look over how the cup’s going, but for now, it’s all I want to say, thanks for reading and have a good day😊

[sports-perspective-blog]

Welcome words

Hi everyone. I'm Vlad and I'm a regular sports fan. Through the last two decades I've been watching plenty of sports and ultimately I decided to share my thoughts, wonderings, observations and so on with the similar thinking people.

I don't pretend to be an expert or especially offend someone, I just want to present my perspective of different worlds competitions, results, rumors. I'm not a native English speaker and only try to become proficient in this language, so my deepest apologies for any mistakes I can make during blogging.

One or two times per week I'll post on this blog. It'll be a big variety of sports from football to ski jumping, speedway and others. Generally, it'll be posts about recent events, but I'm going to add some stories from the past as well. If you have any thoughts to share with me about my blog, feel free to message me.

So, with the tremor in my hands, I press the “Post” button and start this blog, here we go!)