I am supposed to be spending this weekend at @antisoppist's. On account of being utterly exhausted and unable to face the train (plus a bit of coronavirus paranoia, nothing must keep me from skiing in a fortnight!), I am not. I am therefore trying to watch the crosscountry ski racing ( Read more... )

I am home from this year's skiing holiday, and naturally therefore I am off sick today with what is probably some sort of virus, which I suspect my immune system of fighting off quite well the previous 10 days and then letting its guard down when the critical moment had passed. Anyway, I had a brilliant holiday. There was plenty of snow, though ( Read more... )

So on Tuesday the Eurosport commentators made a sarcastic comment about Johannes Dürr, Austrian skier, EPO doper, and accidental inspiration for my fic In the Studio having fallen on a needle. Yesterday Austrian police raided team hotels in Seefeld where the cross-country skiing world championships are being held and apparently literally caught one ( Read more... )

My parents are due to arrive on Thursday. Naturally I have thus spent a substantial proportion of the non-work element of the past couple of days cleaning and tidying. What I resent about this is that it isn't like my parents' current state of impressively spick and span was the norm when I was living at home! We were reasonably clean and tidy in ( Read more... )

To not particularly great surprise, Winter Olympics all time great, Marit Bjørgen has decided that it is time to hang up the ski boots. Not unexpected given that she is 38 and post-Olympics is a natural time for retirement, but still it is a bit weird. I went on my first skiing holiday in 2003, came home and found that Channel 4 then broadcast a ( Read more... )

My neck of the woods had a great deal less snow than much of the country, but still enough to manage a couple of short ski trips around the local park/playing fields/community woodland*. As ever, the wildlife was mostly attested to by its footprints and urine, but I did manage to discover a badger sett, which was suitably exciting. It didn't ( Read more... )

Hope is always a risk in sport, but when yesterday evening I looked up Marit Bjørgen's results in the 30km and saw that she has only not won the race three times since 2008, I allowed myself a bit of it. And she certainly delivered today with a masterful performance that had me writing all the cliches of sports journalism in my head*. Bjørgen has ( Read more... )

The UK's chances at the Winter Olympics may be limited, but BBC commentator Rob Walker has been doing a fine job of upholding the nation's honour by running the length of the cross-country ski tracks clad in a pair of shorts at -15C.


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Four weeks today to the Olympics! Technically it's four weeks tomorrow, as the opening ceremony is on Friday 9th Feb, however there are qualifying events on the 8th Feb and indeed on the 9th before the evening ceremony. You can see the daily schedule here. It must be pretty galling to be picked for your country's team, travel to the Olympics, ( Read more... )

At least it does in cross-country skiing. So congratulations to Andrew Musgrave for his bronze* in today's 15km time-trial in Italy. I'm wishing I'd got round to putting on my Olympic bets rather sooner. It's even made the the BBCBest of all, the UK team has finally dropped its mostly-white suit in face of a blue-toned one, so now the skiers are ( Read more... )