#Olympic Athletes From Russia

[chunkletskhl]

Goalie Vasily Koshechkin:

With Metallurg Magnitogorsk. (Top) Earlier in his career with Lada Togliatti. (Middle Left) Wearing his famous "kitten" mask with Severstal Cherepovets. (Middle Right -- "Koshechkin" means roughly "Little Cat" in Russian, which is funny because he's 6'7") With his kids after winning gold at the 2018 Olympics. (Bottom)

Koshechkin announced his retirement today, on the occasion of his 40th birthday; he retires as the all-time leader in games played by a goalie in Soviet or Russian domestic hockey. Happy Birthday, and Happy Retirement, Vasily Vladimirovich!

(Image Source 1,2,3,4)

[tomorrowusa]

^^^ The caption in Latvian by the Russian official reads: WE DEMAND THAT THESE SPORTS BE INCLUDED AS WELL. By Latvian cartoonist Gatis Šļūka. 

As long as Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine, which includes killing Ukrainian athletes, it should not be permitted to participate in the 2024 Olympics.

If Russia does not act like a normal country then it should not be treated like a normal country. Starting a war of aggression against a peaceful neighbor and following a policy of genocide are not normal.

[facts-i-just-made-up]

What is something to look for in 2024?

Things to look forward to next year (or if reblogging in 2025, tag yourself with which one was your favorite):

Vladimir Putin admits he is not from St. Petersburg Russia, but St. Petersburg Florida.

Hollow Knight: Silksong is cancelled after Epic Games demands 150% of its profits.

Donald Trump's anus prolapses during a debate. He lies and says it didn't, and keeps debating until he passes out.

Joe Biden resigns so that Kamala Harris can prove her worth as the new president.

Kamala Harris names Tom Hanks as her VP.

Kamala Harris resigns so that Tom Hanks can prove his worth as the new president.

Dune Part 2 is cancelled by Warner Bros for a tax deduction. Timothée Chalamet rallies the extras to attack Warner Bros HQ, David Zaslav is eaten by a sandworm during the fight.

The Summer Olympics are canceled due to Covid. Not the disease, but athlete Covid Johnson Jr, who should've known not to light the torch that way in public.

The European Union breaks up due to a fight that began on stage at the Eurovision Song Contest over a performance of Sweden's controversial ballad, "Hej Estland, du luktar som Lutefisk."

Apple Vision Pro bombs due to its price, which is several times the gross national product of Canada, per unit.

Canada is annexed by Denmark when it tries to buy an Apple Vision Pro.

Tom Hanks is elected president of the United States of America.

Tom Hanks foots the bill for a release of Hollow Knight: Silksong on Steam and Nintendo Switch, becoming the most popular president in history.

The character of "Mickey Mouse" Enters the public domain.

Disney violently overthrows popular president Tom Hanks, starting the Second American Civil War and retaining the rights to Mickey Mouse.

The Second American Civil War is cancelled by Disney for a tax deduction.

Jessica Biel announces her marriage to Justin Timberlake will become polyandrous with the inclusion of Lance Bass and one Backstreet Boy to be named later.

[panimoonchild]

Sport is not beyond politics

Oleksandr Pelyeshenko is an athlete from Luhansk Oblast. In 2016, he came one step short of a medal at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics (fourth place).

How many Ukrainians will never be able to build careers, and families, and live their lives while Russian athletes can and will keep pursuing their goals in sports? At the same time, represent their bloodthirsty country, which is Russia itself. This is unfair. It should not be this way. Make Russia pay!

[lettersfromthelevant]

So... the sports scene seems to be doing great, huh?

They suspended Russia, the country that initiated the invasion and killed civilians, while allowing Ukraine - the country invaded and attacked - to compete. However, Israel is also attacked and invaded with over a thousand of our civilians brutalized and we're the ones to get banned now? Okay. "Safety concerns" my ass.

The sports scene is becoming increasingly hostile to Jews and Israelis, which is nothing new. We've seen hostility such as this before, with the most notable occasion being Hitler's ban on Jews in the Olympics. The excuse for banning us this time around is "safety concerns." A transparently bullshit claim that can be seen through just by looking at these same organizations' reactions to Russia and Ukraine. As I mentioned earlier:

They suspended Russia, the country that initiated the invasion and killed civilians, while allowing Ukraine - the country invaded and attacked - to compete. However, Israel is also attacked and invaded with over a thousand of our civilians brutalized and we're the ones to get banned now? Okay. "Safety concerns" my ass.

The rock climbing ban is particularly egregious because it highlights a trend that has been present since the Munich Massacre in 1972. They claim our safety is paramount to them, but when our lives are actively endangered they do nothing to actually protect us. They erase us from public life because it's easier for Jews to just not exist than it is for gentiles to unlearn and prevent antisemitism. They are not interested in doing the work to ensure our inclusion and safety, as demonstrated by the appallingly awful German response to the Israeli Olympics team being taken hostage.

Israelis are intimately familiar with security concerns due to terrorism. What confounds me is the complete apathy and lack of interest in improvement that the rest of the world shows when our lives are threatened. The Munich Massacre marked a turning point in how Israel conducts counter terrorism and national security, but the rest of the world clearly didn't care enough to change. On the contrary, they seemed actively invested in preventing us from securing our safety. The U.S. actually warned the man who orchestrated the attack that Mossad agents were after him. Not-so-fun-fact, did you know that the CIA were best buddies with the PLO?

Clearly, gentile society has drawn an invisible line in the sand and if Jews cross it we are excluded and browbeaten. Things might not be as severe as they were during Hitler's tyranny, but the climate might be shifting in that direction again. This incident is not sports, but has the potential of crossing over: Iceland has threatened to pull out of Eurovision unless Israel is banned from competing. They aren't citing security concerns as their reasoning. Instead, they are fully stating that they are politically opposed to Israel fighting against Hamas and that it goes against Icelandic values.

Apparently, the innocent Israeli lives lost are not important enough for Iceland. I wonder how they would react if a terrorist organization invaded their country, mass raped and slaughtered 1,200+ people, and then kidnapped hundreds more. This is the standard Jews are held to. We are banned when we defend ourselves.

(source)

I don't really know how to end this post, other than by saying, this is why I will always be supportive of things like the Maccabiah Games. Institutions led by Jews, for Jews, provide us with places to go when we cross the invisible line. I meant to publish this around mid-January, when the news about the climbing team broke, but I got side-tracked by antisemitism in another industry because it is infesting everything now. I completely forgot the original conclusion I had for this. I don't want to fear-monger. I'm really tired of envisioning such a bleak future for my people, but I can't help noticing how quickly things are escalating and how easily all of our supposed allies are trying to restrict us from everything, take control over our government, and dictate the future of our people for us.

We really only have each other, and it's essential we maintain the strong bonds that allow for us to persist the antisemitism constantly thrown by a world that has never forgiven us for surviving.

[hero-israel]

People said "if you support Ukrainians defending themselves but not Palestinians you're just racist!" but there's actually a compelling argument for why Hamas is more like Russia than Ukraine. Not for any moral reason mind you (though they are bad). But I see Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Hamas' pogrom (and China's impending invasion of Taiwan) as the same thing:

The last gasp of a once relevant regime trying to cause maximum harm and chaos before everyone stops thinking about them. If Russia couldn't assert its control over the Black Sea and prevent Nato/the Eu from expanding right up to its backyard it would no longer be a credible world power. If China doesn't hurry up and invade Taiwan shifting demographics and Xi Jinping's age might doom any future attempt. If Hamas didn't do something big and flashy, and provoke an overwhelming response so they could play the victim, more and more Arab states would normalize with Israel and the question of Gaza would be hashed out with trade deals instead of bombs, meaning Hamas' reason for holding onto power would become weaker.

That is an excellent analysis! Russia is a politically and demographically senescent petrostate, Hamas still trying to cloak itself in revolutionary language that has only brought failure for a century. Each of them are re-attempting old strategies from the mid-1900s and neither of them have the manpower to actually make it work.

Plus I never saw Ukrainians shoot thousands of missiles into Russia, hijack Russian airplanes, kidnap and murder Russian children, castrate Russian Olympic athletes, send suicide bombers into Russian old age homes on major holidays to wipe out 3 generations of families, send axe murderers into Russian churches to kill old men praying, etc. See, there's actually not a single damned thing in common except BANG BANG KABOOM, which admittedly can be very confusing for children

[mariacallous]

On a sunny April afternoon in 2006, thousands of people flocked to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for a rally with celebrities, Olympic athletes, and rising political stars. Their cause: garner international support to halt a genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region.

“If we care, the world will care. If we act, then the world will follow,” Barack Obama, then the junior Illinois senator, told the crowd, speaking alongside future House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That same week, then-Sen. Joe Biden introduced a bill in Congress calling on NATO to intervene to halt the genocide in Sudan. “We need to take action on both a military and diplomatic front to end the conflict,” he said.

Flash-forward 18 years, and the prospect of genocide again looms in Sudan amid an explosive new civil war. But this time, there are no rallies, no A-list celebrities, no calls for outside military intervention. Few world leaders pay anything more than lip service to condemning the atrocities.

Fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced some 9 million since the conflict began in April 2023. The United States accused both sides of committing war crimes and atrocities and concluded that the RSF and its allied militias have committed ethnic cleansing.

Western officials and aid workers working on Sudan say they are vexed, and horrified, by the lack of international attention and resources the conflict is receiving—particularly compared to the global response to the conflict in 2006, which was the progenitor of the current conflagration.

If this trend continues and there is no forceful international crisis response, they warn, Sudan will likely collapse into a failed state and could face full-fledged genocide once again.

“You can’t help but watch the level of focus on crises like Gaza and Ukraine and wonder what just 5 percent of that energy could have done in a context like Sudan and how many thousands, tens of thousands of lives it could’ve saved,” said Alan Boswell, an expert on the region at the International Crisis Group.

The top general of the SAF, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the head of the RSF, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemeti” Dagalo, jointly seized power from a transitional government in a coup in 2021. Tensions between the rival sides escalated and finally erupted into war in April 2023.

In the 13 months since, the RSF has entrenched its positions around the national capital of Khartoum, forcing the SAF to relocate its headquarters to the coastal city of Port Sudan. The RSF has made steady gains in seizing control of Darfur and advancing southward and eastward against SAF forces. The SAF still controls territories around Khartoum and up the Nile River, a vital strategic route to Egypt; along the Red Sea coast; and the eastern borders with Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The conflict has also expanded into a full-fledged regional proxy war. Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as Riyadh’s arch regional rival Iran, back the SAF, while the United Arab Emirates is reportedly funneling arms and military supplies to the RSF. The RSF also reportedly receives support from Chad and from Russia through its affiliated mercenary groups.

The focal point of the conflict now is on El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur and the center of fighting. The RSF has taken control of vast swaths of western and southern Sudan in its war against the SAF. El Fasher is the last SAF stronghold in Darfur, occupying a strategically important position for trade routes from neighboring Libya and Chad.

The RSF recently began its advance on El Fasher where an estimated 2 million to 2.8 million civilians have sought to take refuge from the fighting. (Precise figures are hard to come by.)

“The risk of genocide exists in Sudan. It is real, and it is growing every single day,” Alice Nderitu, the U.N. special advisor on the prevention of genocide, warned in a U.N. Security Council meeting last week.

A lengthy report from Human Rights Watch documented how the RSF and allied militias committed widespread atrocities, including mass rape, child murder, and massacres of civilians when it captured the Sudanese city of El Geneina last year. U.S. and U.N. officials and human rights experts warn that the same will likely happen if the RSF takes control of El Fasher, but on a much wider scale. The United States and aid groups have accused the SAF of blocking vital food aid from entering the country and RSF forces of looting humanitarian stocks, exacerbating the crisis and pushing regions of the country closer to famine.

“The potential fatality generation here is off the charts,” said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale’s School of Public Health who runs a research project that monitors the conflict in Sudan. “What will happen when the RSF takes El Fasher? Exactly what is happening in every other place they control.”

“There is Hiroshima- and Nagasaki-level casualty potential,” he added, referring to the U.S. atomic bombs dropped on Japan in World War II that killed up to 225,000 people.

Aid organizations and officials who work on Sudan have long decried the relative inattention the conflict in Sudan gets compared to Ukraine or the war in Gaza. Some 20 million people—or 10 times the population of Gaza—are at risk of famine in various regions of Sudan. “Very few people who don’t work on Sudan know that Darfur is on the brink of famine,” Boswell said. “Obviously, everyone knows about the risk of famine in Gaza.”

U.S. President Joe Biden’s own social media posts about Gaza versus Sudan provide another, albeit imperfect, window into the attention each conflict receives. Biden tweeted about Israel or Gaza at least 107 times in the six months since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks that started the Israel-Hamas war. Since the war in Sudan began over a year ago, he has tweeted about Sudan four times—three of which were about the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum right after fighting broke out.

Aid groups are strained for resources to tackle the humanitarian crisis caused by the war. In February, Doctors Without Borders warned that in one refugee camp alone in North Darfur, one child was dying every two hours of malnutrition. In April, on the conflict’s first anniversary, aid groups said the international humanitarian response plan to aid the Sudanese was only 6 percent funded. At a donor conference that month in Paris, countries pledged $2 billion more—though that is still only about half of what aid groups estimate the country needs.

Biden appointed a special envoy for Sudan in February—Tom Perriello, a former U.S. representative from Virginia and State Department veteran. Most experts have cheered Perriello’s new push to hold cease-fire talks in the months since and engage U.S. lawmakers on Capitol Hill to bring more levers of U.S. power and financing to bear on Sudan, but they also fear his efforts may be too little, too late for the civilians trapped in El Fasher.

“It will be very hard to deescalate the situation, though everyone should try. But there is an aura of inevitability that this is all going to blow up,” Boswell said. “The degree of mobilization from all sides is hard to walk down.”

Diplomatic and aid officials working on Sudan have some theories on why the atrocities in Darfur and across the country are receiving such little attention now compared to the 2000s, but none gives a full answer.

In 2006, the United States was still reaching the heights of its post-9/11 “war on terror” campaign. Sudan, under former dictator Omar al-Bashir, had given safe haven to Osama bin Laden as he built up al Qaeda’s global terror network, and “bashing Bashir and his genocide in Darfur couched nicely with [counterterrorism] priorities” of the U.S. government at the time, said Nicole Widdersheim, a former senior National Security Council official now with Human Rights Watch.

The memories of failed and successful international interventions to halt genocide—Rwanda in 1994 and the Balkans later that decade, respectively—were still relatively fresh in the minds of policymakers. The costly Western campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya that later exposed the shortcomings and blowback of military interventions were still underway.

It also preceded the current era of great-power competition, where Washington is intensely focused on countering Russia and China. Sudan also competes with the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine for international attention and humanitarian resources. Others suggested racism built into Western foreign policy played a part. “It’s seen as yet ‘another war in Africa like all the others,’” said one official dryly. Not one single factor can explain it all, experts concluded.

“Gaza is taking up the always limited American public interest and activism on a foreign crisis, but to be fair, there was nearly no public activism or engagement on the Sudan war before” the Israel-Hamas war, Widdersheim said.

Experts say the relative inattention Sudan has gotten from the top echelons of the White House and other Western powers that could have influence in pressuring the warring sides in Sudan to sit for peace talks has led to the current protracted state of the war.

Biden hosted Kenyan President William Ruto for a state visit this week, where the two called on “the warring parties in Sudan to facilitate unhindered humanitarian access and immediately commit to a ceasefire” toward the end of a lengthy joint statement but did not elaborate further. U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas Greenfield have also been outspoken about urging an end to the conflict in Sudan.

Successive cease-fire talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, over the past year, brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia, failed to clinch any lasting deal. Those talks were led on the U.S. side not by a top White House official or Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but by the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Molly Phee.

Behind-the-scenes efforts by some members of Congress in December 2023 to appoint a special presidential envoy on Sudan—one who would report directly to the White House, rather than an envoy reporting to the assistant secretary of state—were unsuccessful, multiple officials and congressional aides said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration dynamics. Perriello was appointed two months later.

Perriello in mid-April said that cease-fire talks would resume in Jeddah “within the next three weeks,” but so far those talks have yet to materialize. Several current and former officials familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak candidly, said the talks in Jeddah could resume in June, by which point the RSF could have already captured El Fasher from the mostly cutoff SAF forces.

“The need to start formal peace talks in Jeddah is absolutely urgent, and the United States is working exhaustively with partners to make that happen,” said a State Department spokesperson. “But we are not waiting for formal talks to begin—rather, we have accelerated our diplomatic engagements to align international efforts to end this war, mitigate the humanitarian crisis, and prevent future atrocities.”

Cease-fire talks have worked in limited ways in the past, such as when the United States got both sides to briefly stop fighting in Khartoum so it could evacuate its embassy in April 2023. “When the right leverage is put on the table at the right time to get the RSF and SAF to stop fighting, it can be done,” said Kholood Khair, a Sudanese policy analyst and founding director of Confluence Advisory, a Sudan-focused think tank. “The international community has just chosen not to deploy that same leverage this time around.”

Khair added that the Jeddah talks format has failed before, and it will likely fail again. “The concern is that because of the laziness and complicity of the international community at this point, you don’t have any diplomats who are looking for a new way of doing things. Jeddah in many ways is blocking the start of any new diplomatic efforts or other good ideas that could be effective.”

“Diplomats are fixated on Jeddah now, simply because it’s already there,” Khair said.

As Perriello engaged in frenetic diplomacy, he has also publicly marveled at how little attention the scale of the conflict and death in Sudan is receiving on the international stage.

“One of the things that to me captures just how invisible and horrific this war is, is that we don’t have a credible death count,” Perriello said during a congressional hearing in front of the 21-member Senate Foreign Relations Committee this month. “We literally don’t know how many people have died—possibly to a factor of 10 or 15. The number was earlier 15,000 to 30,000. Some think it’s at 150,000,” he said. During the course of Perriello’s hearing, senators cycled out of the room due to scheduling conflicts, often leaving only one senator in the room and 20 empty seats.

[jennibeultimate]

Margarita Mamun about abusive coaching methods and how it still influences her now

❗Tw: harassment, abuse - physical and emotional❗

I think these comments are very important to understand how harmful these methods are and that her success came with a big price. Imo she is the first person to call out Irina Viner's behavior.

The "Over the limit" documentary was shocking to me when it was first released because the emotional abuse was shown. If this is what is seen as appropriate behavior on camera, what happens when cameras are not there?

Rita Mamun left the sport with top results and recognition for her success so she had opportunities to earn money after her career. But what's with all those gymnasts trained with such methods that never had any kind of success? These ppl leave broken and gain nothing from it. Abuse needs to be stopped and with interviews like this more ppl are made aware of what's the consequences of such abusive methods.

I think this is important because often you see Russian athletes defend the behavior of their coaches even if it included physical and emotional abuse. Rita questions these abusive methods and sees the wrong in it. So to ppl saying that these ways of trainings make ppl successful: NO! The athletes are successful despite those methods! And many of them never see any kind of success. Don't forget that the public only sees the end results when someone gets successful. We do seldomly hear of those who leave such training regimes broken.

Source of translation:

Original interview:

Personal sidenote: You may have noticed that I seldomly post about Russian athletes anymore since the war in Ukraine. I don't want to use my platform - even if it's such a small one - to promote Russian athletes as athletes are used for propaganda in Russia (as we could very well see with the Averina twins). I thought this was worth sharing though bc it doesn't defend abusive methods for results as I often see it from other Russian athletes also in other sports like figure skating. Rita had an important message and it's worth sharing to me!

[sergeifyodorov]

How does world juniors work and where would one watch?

This is my first season watching the nhl and I’m from nz so I suspect we wont be represented lol but I’m keen to learn more and watch some! Any recommendations on what ones to watch?

omg anon WELCOME and also ... a brief WORLD JUNIORS PRIMER for you all...

Puppy Bowl!

If you're from NZ I'm not sure you know about the Puppy Bowl -- a show run concurrent to the Super Bowl, but all the participants are puppies? It means absolutely nothing but it is adorable. The World Juniors are basically that, but also it is exactly as important as the Olympics what are you talking about. Their official name is the "IIHF U-20 World Championship," which is a pretty self-explanatory name -- it's a tournament for players 20 and under (I believe they have to be at least sixteen, but because young athletes mature physically a LOT in those four years, the vast majority are eighteen-nineteen-twenty). Tradition dictates it starts on Boxing Day, and it runs for about three weeks -- it starts with a round-robin, followed by a single-elimination tournament, a bronze-medal match, and a relegation match.

Players are selected by their national hockey administration -- for Canada, it's Hockey Canada, but all countries within the IIHF (International Ice Hockey Federation) have their own. The intricacies of ~Sports Bureaucracy~ are really long and only a LITTLE relevant, but every country ices the best roster they can, which means players are often "loaned" from CHL teams, NCAA universities, European league teams, or, occasionally, the NHL. (Note: You can usually tell how good a World Junior team is by how many players have been drafted/signed by NHL teams: the Canadians, Swedes, and Americans are almost always entirely draftees or under-18s, while the other teams in the upper division might only have a handful, or even only one, drafted player.)(Second note: The quality of a team has less correlation than you might think to them winning a single-elimination tournament.)

Like I said earlier, it starts with a round-robin: there are ten teams in the main WJ (we'll get to this in a second), divided into two groups of five, who each play each other once. The worst-performing team of each group is sent to the relegation match post-tournament, and the eight other teams do a single-elimination match until one team wins gold.

Teams and Divisions

This year, the top ten teams are: Canada, the US, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Norway, Czechia, Slovakia, Switzerland, and Latvia. Because of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia is banned from participating in IIHF tournaments, but when it's not it's always in the top ten (likely instead of Norway, Switzerland, or Latvia.) UNLIKE the NHL, the IIHF has multiple "divisions" of teams, and at the end of the tournament the bottom two teams play a match to avoid relegation from the official ~IIHF World U20 Championship~ to Division I, which is right under it. There is also a Division II and a Division III -- and after some sleuthing, there IS a New Zealand team in Div III!!!!!

Canada and Broadcasting

Unfortunately, the WJC is basically only popular in Canada -- essentially a Boxing Day tradition to watch the babies play and cheer for our teams' prospects, or, usually, just Team Canada. In fact, Hockey Canada has bid to host it basically every other year until 2030. Because of this (or maybe a bit of a chicken-egg situation), the WJC is... kind of hard to find online if you're outside of Canada? I know for a fact it's broadcast on TSN (one of our sports networks) without any regional blackouts, but I don't think there's anything available in NZ that will be streaming it, especially because it's not one of the IIHF top ten countries. If you're not already doing so, you'll probably have to sail the high seas for your fix. (If you don't know where to do this, you can slide into my DMs and I can send you a link!)

Who to watch?

There's basically two routes for this: one, pick the team you think is going to win, or two, go look up what prospects your NHL team has that are playing at the WJC and watch them (Note: neither the Avs nor the Oilers have any WJC prospects this year!) The IIHF website has the game schedule listed, including time-zone adjusted start times -- they're all staggered, so if you have a lot of free time you might be able to watch more than one!

Personally, as both a Canadian and a Leafs fan -- both WJC-chosen Leafs prospects are Team Canada players, including their captain Fraser Minten -- I would recommend Team Canada (unashamed homer bias here.) They're usually one of the favourites to win, and they're almost entirely either drafted or not yet eligible, so you can see either your prospects or you can look at Celebrini and hope (if your team is bad) that he's coming to you one day. The Americans are generally considered Thee tournament favourites, if you prefer your teams highly touted.

To me, the WJC has twofold appeal: one, junior hockey is, for lack of a better term, messier than high-level hockey? Pucks are more likely to bounce in silly ways, rushes can get crazy, and you can get both a super high amount of shots and a super high amount of goals. Hormonal teenagers playing super high-stakes hockey for the first times in their lives and they can get really, really into it! The passion a kid has scoring a medal-winning goal in front of a sold-out crowd is absolutely unrivalled by all but the Cup Finals. (OMGGGGG THIS IS YOUR FIRST HOCKEY SEASON TOO... ok don't let me start talking about nhl playoffs because THIS is the puppy bowl that is the super bowl. but worse! i mean better but it's worse (for your cardiovascular health.))

Two, that these guys are still so young, and that at least a few of them have long, illustrious, potentially-Hall-of-Fame NHL careers ahead of them. For a lot of young stars, the World Juniors is an important part of their Lore. Watching someone become something as an adult after you've seen him as a junior is... magical? World Junior hockey is diamond-in-the-rough hockey. There's no polish, but it's the rawness of the million-dollar stone that sells it.

[lil-gingerbread-queen]

Today, the Olympic torch is going through my city.

There are many reasons why this year's games are shameful (Homeless people were deported to Orleans to "clean" Paris. Poor students were kicked out of their apartments so the gov could use them to house security and medical staff. Apart from those, anyone working at the games is NOT paid, they are exploiting young folks who do sports by making it sound like they will be able to see the games without paying, but they are going to work for 11h a day for free. Corals were destroyed to install the surf's competition, when we already have locations with the needed equipment...), and one of them is Israel's presence. Russia is banned and Russian athletes cannot participate under Russia's colors because of the war with Ukraine, but Israel is authorized even tho there are currently doing a genocide. The International Court has recognized the risk of a genocide in Gaza, Israel should be ban from the Games.

I invite you to sign and share these multiple petitions to ban Israel from the Olympic Games and other international sport competitions. These links were given to me by the Association France Palestine Solidarité (France Palestine Solidarity Association) and BDS France :

Avaaz campaign to ban Israel from the Olympic Games

Eko campaign to International Olympic Committee, FIFA, UEFA, and other sporting Federation

Diem campaign to suspend Israel from international sports

[virtchandmoir]

Wickenheiser, Virtue among 42 former Canadian Olympians banned from entering Russia

333 total Canadians banned in response to sanctions imposed by federal government

April 12, 2023

Hayley Wickenheiser, Tessa Virtue and Clara Hughes are among dozens of former Canadian Olympians banned from entering Russia for signing a statement encouraging the removal of Russian athletes from next year's Paris Olympics amid the country's invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement it was closing its borders to 333 Canadians, most of whom are politicians, in response to the Canadian government periodically imposing sanctions against Russia.

The list includes a group of 42 retired Canadian Olympians who signed a statement last month urging the Canadian Olympic Committee to reject the idea of allowing Russians to participate in the 2024 Games unless Russia withdraws from Ukraine.

The Canadian government was also among a group of 35 governments that released a statement in February saying that, without clarity on a workable neutrality model, "we do not agree that Russian and Belarusian athletes should be allowed back into competition."

The COC said in a statement last month that it supports the exclusion of athletes representing Russia and Belarus from international sport as long as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues.

The International Olympic Committee has not yet made a decision on whether or not Russian and Belarusian athletes will be banned from the Paris Games, saying last month the decision will be made at the appropriate time. The IOC did, however, recommend that individual athletes from both countries who do not have links to the military be allowed to return to competition under neutral status.

—CBC

[richkidcityfriends]

your opinion on 2022 winter Olympics

okay so im assuming this is only about figure skating and i mean oml there was so much going on. below the cut bc i think this is gonna be long.

okay so FIRST OF ALL the kamila valieva situation. where to begin. (as a note: none of this is a statement on her except in relation to the 2022 olys)

the positive test being from rusnats and only being found out in february is weird. idk if we ever found out exactly why that happened? but i can only assume it was meddling from the russian end.

i think the media response was cruel, and i think part of that was a lot of people were trying to talk about it without knowing the full situation, but the amount of vicious hate and blame kamila received was unjustified. she was fifteen years old and in an abusive situation, to what extent she knew about the doping is irrelevant in my mind, the blame falls on the adults in power (mainly her coaches). eteri tutberidze is notoriously controlling and abusive, and there is no way any of that was happening without her being responsible. she controls the amount of WATER her skaters can drink. skating at that level, especially in russia, your coach is practically your primary guardian; if eteri told her to dope then there was pretty much nothing she could do. only eteri girls were ever going to go to the olympics, if she switched coaches that would have ended her life's goal (and the way they train is so all-consuming that to not get to the olympics at all would have felt life shattering).

should she have been been allowed to skate? i dont think so. at least partially bc it essentially proves to coaches that you can "get away with" doping as long as the people you are drugging are children. obviously having an athlete who has taken performance enhancing drugs is unfair to everyone else, but that goes without saying. HOWEVER i do understand the worry that the test could have been wrong or she might not have known, either way it would have been unfair to her. (the "irreparable harm" quote is always taken out of context - they meant that if she skated and was found guilty they could strip her of the medal, but if she was banned and found innocent there was no fixing it). ultimately though i think letting her skate was the wrong decision (especially since the case STILL hasnt been settled).

i dont think eteri told her to throw the free to make sure the others got their medals, because she looked so traumatised afterwards and eteri reacted so badly (ive never understood this theory tbh)

that was the first scandal from the olys but oml it was definitely not the last. there was so much going on. olympics from hell. lets talk about the womens podium.

(but first a note on ultra c elements: do i think the sport is suffering because of the increased value placed on jumps? yes. do i think artistry is important? absolutely. do i think there is a conversation to be had about the morals of training young children (especially girls) to do dangerous jumps that cause permanent damage to their bodies? one hundred fucking percent. things need to change in this sport. however. i will make repeated references to whether or not someone is jumping ultra c when discussing the podium, because that is how its scored atm, and i do think that they aren’t irrelevant (it is a sport, athletic feats are also important) just please please know that i am also taking artistry into account its just harder to objectively phrase in a short paragraph and this is already long enough). okay caveat over. please no one attack me. lets go.

look i KNOW the most pressing question is do i think anna deserved gold HOWEVER. have you considered. did anna deserve to be sent to the olympics at all. and this makes me insane because like?? skating like she did at the olys?? yeah she probably deserved to be there!! so it kinda seems mean to talk about this but ALSO i feel like we definitely have to not forget it so. the russian olympic team was pretty much based off of the podium for rusnats, which that year was kamila, sasha, anna. but anna in third place was veryyy controversial bc like. she had no ultra c elements at all (and her tech is DODGY so without them it gets even harder to justify her high scores) but elizaveta had a triple axel (and better tech) so a LOT of people thought that she should have come third, but rusfed just wanted to send anna to the olys instead (which i pretty much agree with).

but okay whether you like it or not she DID make the olympic team so. womens olympic podium. a grenade of a question. everyone is allowed their own opinions on it im not saying anyone is wrong if they think differently!!!!! also im only going to talk about the top five bc this is already wayyy too long.

i know on tiktok a while back the popular opinion was that wakaba should’ve been gold, which i don’t really agree with, however she absolutely should not have been fifth. no doubt in my mind she should have been at LEAST fourth, if not third. kamila should have been behind her i don’t care how many quads she was attempting, she fell like five times. she got through on reputation and the eteri bonus alone. kaori did skate cleanly, but with no triple c, and her tech isn’t great on some of her jumps, so wakaba (who fell on a jump, but had a triple axel, and generally better tech and artistry imo) could have come third and i would have been happy. anna i go back and forth on, because her artistry is alright, and technically she does jump quads, but her tech skills are SO questionable (her quad lutz is neither a quad nor a lutz). the tech bar for quads is lower than for triples, and i do kinda think that makes sense, but her quad tech is worse than most of the other quad jumping girls so it’s a fair comparison. i don’t think she deserved gold, but im never fully sure about silver either. honestly her, wakaba, and kaori can fight it out for second/third/fourth. in terms of actual skaters i like wakaba best, in terms of who performed best on the day i think you could make a compelling argument for any order.

that of course leaves sasha in first place. i know she fell on her triple axel in the short, but the only people who didn’t fall at all were anna (i’ll talk about her last) and kaori, and while triple c elements aren’t the only important thing, the skater who fell on one and landed five kind of has to be above the skater who attempted none at all, imo, so that puts kaori out of the running. wakaba fell once as well, and she definitely has the edge on artistry, but i don’t think sashas artistry was as bad as a lot of people say, especially in her short, so i don’t think thats quite enough to put wakaba ahead of sasha overall. sasha’s tech skills were so much higher than the rest of the skaters that i think it would be almost impossible to bridge that gap with artistry alone. lastly theres anna, who ofc actually won the ogm. two clean skates, slightly better artistry, much worse tech (i know sasha’s tech isn’t perfect either, but she’s definitely better – id say thanks to plushenko). annas tech should have been called, if not her edges then at least for prerotation. sasha fell on a triple axel and anna landed a double in the short, sasha landed five quads and anna landed two in the free. taking into account how poor her quad tech is, i don’t think that her artisty is enough to pass sasha.

however!!!! again i want to reiterate!!!!! everyone is allowed their own opinions on this!!! i do not give a damn if you think that anastasiia shabotova should have come first!!!! go you!!! to each their own <3

now for something that i do think you can wrong about. the reaction to sashas reaction to the scores was appalling. she was seventeen years old (a CHILD) in an extremely high stress situation and had been told by her (abusive, manipulative) coaches that if she landed all five quads she would win, and when this turned out to be untrue she got upset and had what was clearly a panic attack, asked not to be filmed and was ignored by every cameraman in the area, had to immediately go in front of millions of people while still being a mess, and was then attacked from all angles for being “ungrateful” and “showing bad sportsmanship.” show some empathy. (especially ppl who are still giving out about it now “on behalf of anna” when they seemed to be at least friendly again as soon as the very next day)

OKAY WE’RE ALMOST DONE i mostly only follow women’s so the rest of this is going to be brief

sui/han deserved ogm, my sister and i were rooting for miura/kihara to do well but we knew there was no chance for a medal. loving seeing them do so well rn.

nathan chen’s costume was ridiculous. last time i said my nathan chen take i got eaten alive on tiktok so im not gonna say much about him. he did deserve gold tho.

scoring felt harsh on yuzuru. wish he’d gotten another ogm but it wasn’t meant to be. im glad he got to attempt the quadruple axel at the olympics at least.

papadakis/cizeron ogm deserved.

oh MY god i forgot about the team event. pls someone save me. im so sorry i know no one wants this much. this isn’t even the worst i can do. i have talked at my friends for hours straight before about figure skating. i cant help it i have no control. we are going to ignore the team event okay. Just give them their medals. pls. i beg. they still don’t have their medals. i know it sucks for the rest of the russian team if they lose the gold bc kamila was stripped but you have to give the rest of them their medals.

anyway if you made it until the end here is a gold star ⭐ i don’t know how you did it.

[davidshawnsown]

The Basis for my Ukraine War Series - The Reasons Why Ukraine is Fighting Back

My ongoing Ukrainian War fanfic series here on Tumblr is an AU based on real events - a what if of the war had American volunteers fought in like manner as the Lafayette Squadron of the First World War and the volunteer flyers of WW2 - early on in the invasion of Ukraine and in support of the young International Legion of Ukraine, in the person of the real life national sports athletes, amateur and pro alike, of the nation's pro leagues and the national federations of the USOPC based in Colorado Springs, alongside their companions in Canada and the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Commitees.

The reasons why I've done this is in order that the fanfic writing community here know that there's a conflict occuring far away from their homes, wherein for over the past two years Ukrainians and the foreign volunteers of the ILTD and others have been fighting Russians and foreign volunteer allies under her banner all across the frontline, resulting in great victories and tragic defeats and the heroic sacrifices of thousands upon thousands who fought for the freedom and independence of the free world against the might of Russia funded and now armed increasingly by her BRICS allies.

This is also inspired by the novels of the late Tom Clancy and W.E.B. Griffin, the latter of which I began to read and thus have inspired my writing style here on Tumblr since 2022, as well as the AU fanfics featuring sportspersons on Archive of Our Own.

This work is also in a way raising awareness of the need to help arm the people of Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia especiallly among the Americans and Canadians whose fan fiction and original writings have inspired millions around the world. I strongly urge them now more than ever to do their part to help fund and support Ukraine materially and financially so that it can continue its struggle that began in 2014.

May this work be a big contributor to not just the ongoing struggle of the Ukrainian people, but also to the total victory we ought thus to prepare to take part against Russia and its allies around the world.

Glory to Ukraine!

John

@lukeexplorer

(I was inspired by Luke's explainer on his on Substack to make this one.)

[bestonova-rg]

With Russia and Belarus barred from Euros this year, it looks like there is no possible way for either country to qualify athletes to the Olympics

[stillunusual]

In tankie clownland, Poland is even more evil than the Baltic states…. Tankies invariably suffer from a mental illness called Poland Derangement Syndrome.

Just like the Nazis, supporters of the state that didn't build its first toilet paper factory until 1969 think of Russia's Polish neighbours as untermenschen. They hate Poland with every fibre of their being and find it impossible to even mention the P word without having a tantrum, telling massive lies or resorting to infantile, racist slurs.

I'm not entirely sure why Poland in particular lives rent-free in their otherwise empty heads….

Maybe it's because the world revolution had to be cancelled after Poland defeated the Red Army in 1920.

Or perhaps it's because Poland was the first country to overthrow communist rule at the end of the 1980s, which led directly to the collapse of communism in the rest of the Soviet bloc, the fall of the Berlin wall, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the destruction of the USSR itself - as well as triggering a never-ending torrent of tankie tears.

It could even be because Polish athlete Władysław Kozakiewicz told the Soviet Union to fuck off live on TV during the Moscow Olympics.

But whatever the reason, the mere fact that Poland exists (and is so much better off since freeing itself from Soviet occupation) has caused 99% of male tankies to suffer from erectile dysfunction, and their impotent rage keeps them awake at night….

[jehanneargentee]

Look, I know everyone keeps analyzing Goncharov as this great mafia movie. Which is understandable since it was marketed as a mafia movie. It is also COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY WRONG.

Goncharov is a Cold War Movie.

The clock symbolism is lovely, yes. We've all read the meta. But watch it again and turn off the volume if you have to and track the brand names. The book titles on shelves. The shift from Cryllic, to latinized Russian, to Italian and occasionally English.

Katya and Goncharov have two very different arcs as they adapt to life outside the motherland. Yes, they both end tragically, Goncharov is one of those movies. But Katya grows, adapts, keeps what is precious (the teacups, why does no one ever mention the teacups?) and even seems to add a few Russian things while becoming western and moving on. Goncharov.... doesn't. His westernization is as expensive (and ultimately shallow) as a tailored suit.

You could pick the whole story up and have it be about ballet dancers, or Olympic athletes instead (fanfic writers, PLEASE!) and Katya might have a happier ending, but Goncharov wouldn't.

Because we are defined by the choices we make, including what we keep and what we leave behind. Goncharov never leaves Russia behind, even in Naples. Goncharov is a Cold War Movie.