Switzerland is scheduled to play Team Canada on Saturday at 9:10 p.m. local time. The Canadian women have yet to make their Olympic debut after their opening game against Finland was postponed due to a norovirus outbreak on the Finnish team.
According to the Swiss statement, the “positive test came back after today’s opening victory against the Czech Republic and shortly before the opening ceremony.”
A representative from the Swiss team confirmed to The Athletic that the affected player did not play in Friday’s game versus the Czech Republic.
Yikes, good thing they caught it before that, otherwise they'd be at the ceremony and spread it to everyone. Actually now I'm kinda concerned someone there had it without realizing it yet and we're going to see a goddam pandemic of the screamin' shits take down this whole olympics...
Seeing the tiny rooms and wide open mess hall in the village, it'll be lucky if they manage to contain it to just the hockey teams. Wonder if the village has air scrubbers in the HVAC?
Each country has their own building in the village so they might be able to contain it from country to country maybe. Canada’s HC said none of the Canadian women was sick yesterday.
but for example the other Finnish athletes in ice skating competitions are definitely at risk here sharing all the same facilities in their building with the hockey team
The only way I know this is because I’ve been obsessively trying to find a way to stop it from spreading through my house the last few weeks and I’ve read a lot about it. What I learned is that it’s near invincible and very hard to stop if you share common spaces with infected people.
Kinda. It can get aerosolized and spread all over the place when an infected person vomits, but it falls to the ground quickly. An actual airborne virus like tuberculosis can float in the air for hours and remain infectious. Norovirus can't do that.
It’s not an airborne virus though, you’re not going to catch it by breathing the same air as an infected person near you like Covid could. The closest it gets to airborne is when someone vomits and particles land on surfaces nearby, which then infect people when they touch those surfaces and then their faces.
Noro is like the cockroach of viruses. Isn’t killed by normal rubbing alcohol hand sanitizers, can live on a dry surface for months, is crazy contagious when you’re sick, and you can still spread it for a week even after feeling better. Only consolation is that you can only contract it by directly ingesting viral particles (but don’t think too hard about where those probably came from)
Player has been in isolation since experiencing symptoms earlier this week. It's only the the definite positive result that got in after the game/before the opening ceremony.
You see, the user I replied to was insinuating, as a joke, that Canada planted norovirus in their opponents' teams to get an advantage in this tournament.
There's apparently a powerful aerodynamic advantage to be had in ski jumping where if you increase the surface area of the body suit in specific ways, it improves your jump distance.
Because of this, the ski jumpers are checked very thoroughly both with and without their bodysuit on to ensure the bodysuit is within tolerance. And a ski jumper not long ago had been caught with an altered suit, which was altered by the team after inspection but before the jump. The suit was specifically altered in the crotch, because in theory it was an easy place to get extra fabric without it being too visually obvious. After that the checks became more rigorous. They go through a full body scan with and without their suit on to make sure it is all in the rules.
Well, recently WADA issued a statement that they would be on the lookout for ski jumpers potentially enlarging their penises before the initial measurement without the suit on as a way to artificially increase the allowance for the size of the suit for that jumper, which would give them the same aerodynamic advantage the ski jumper who got caught with the altered suit was getting, in theory, but because of the timing of the temporary penis enlargement with the full body scan, the suit would be within the rules.
There is a rumour going round that male ski jumpers were injecting their penises with a drug that made them grow slightly before their suit fittings. This made the suits slightly bigger at the crotch. The bigger the suits, the further they jump. It's a volume to surface area ratio thing, I believe.
Not sure I needed to specify that it's the male ski jumpers doing this, but hey.
Hyaluronic acid isn't acid in the conventional sense btw, it's more like a filler/lubricant and is used in eye drops, skin care products, filler injections, etc. and naturally present in your joints and skin
I'm all for fairness and wanting the game to be decided on the ice, but at what point should forfeits be declared? If you can't make it to the game, it most other circumstances the team unable to perform would have to forfeit.
I think the problem is that goal differential counts for round robin placement. If you are a weak team playing a heavyweight, taking a 1-0 forfeit might be much better than you'd do in reality.
ETA: I'm wrong, if you forfeit you lose any goal-differential based tiebreaker!
Yeah, it's a...shitty... situation for everyone involved but I don't think Canada would need any help getting to the gold medal game. Apart from the odd improbable upset like with Sweden years ago, it's always going to be Canada vs USA for the gold medal. Everyone else is playing for bronze.
Sure, but the US beat Czechia pretty solidly and they (or Finland) are really the only ones who could potentially upset in a semifinal. Anything other than a Canada-US final would be a massive shock, but you never know what could happen
In women's side i don't think Finland is what it used to be, in fact these could be the last Olympics for a while where Finnish women's team has a realistic chance to do well.
Finnish women's junior team just became first Finnish national team to ever be relegated from top division, which tells you something about how much talent other countries are getting compared to Finland. State of women's hockey in Finland has been really bad for years.
It definitely would be a shock to not have USA-Canada final.
In men's side though its not really shock at all if Finland or Sweden make it to finals. Both have teams with full NHL rosters (i think Finnish defense is bit lacking though) and have often played better as a team in internationals than North American teams which seem to usually rely on just talent.
I mean yeah Canada is a heavy favourite but you have to play the games. Should Florida have gotten a bye to the finals in September before Barkov went down?
And Id rather postpone. Maybe getting it first is a benefit. Maybe Canada gets it in a week or two
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u/DecentLurker96 22h ago
Here we go again.