Get to Know the 2020 Oatland Winter Games Athletes!!

Our National Anthem:
"Inazuma Double Kick"

Below are our uniforms:

Uniform Top

This is the upper portion of the uniform for all our athletes across all sports for both sexes:

Uniform Men's Bottoms

This is the lower half of the men's uniform for all sports:

Uniform Women's Bottoms

This is the lower half of the women's uniform for most of our female athletes:

Uniform Women's Skirt

This is the lower half of the women's uniform for our mermaid representatives as well as our female figure skating participant:

And here is our flag:

Fishy Apples Flag

With the sudden marriage & retirement of Mai Fu Ji and Ringo Onara, as well as the untimely death of John-Bob Zachariah over the summer while hiking in The Guppies, this left our figure skating ranks a bit barren. We still had pro skater Krill Orly from last year's games, the Lorelai ice dancer who felt so disappointed in his performance last time. "I honestly thought I'd do so much better than I did..." This later led to him overexerting himself in training a month later resulting in a torn meniscus. I believe we have footage? "Maybe this t- MOTHERF#%*!! SON OF A S#*@ F*#^@R ASS... WHY... WHY ARE YOU STILL RECORDING THIS YOU FLIPPANT MILQUETOAST TWIT!! CAN'T YOU SEE I'M HURT?! WHO KEEPS RECORDING LIKE THIS?! ARE... ARE YOU DEFECTIVE OR SOMETHING?!" That cameraman was later successfully sued by Krill for ⅎ3,000,000 for gross negligence. Meanwhile while was in physical therapy he met a young nekomimi girl also going through PT, one Erina Densentsu from the southern coastal town of Jazz, who had coincidentally just entered the pro skating circuit. As it so happened, the duo decided to use their down time to rebuild their bodies and go through PT together, and in a few months they were back in top shape, where they decided to skate as a pair for the summer season, taking the pairs league by storm, becoming the #2 ranked pairs duo in Fishy Apples. When they resumed solo skating in the fall, Krill's rankings had risen to third in the Fishy Apples men's rankings, up two places from a year ago, and Erina was surprising all by taking Krill's tutelage to heart and becoming the #1 female skater in Fishy Apples. Now the Oatland Games, and they're ready and waiting.

Once again, no one ultimately stepped up to represent Fishy Apples in the field of cross-country. Even with us trying to make use of what prime area we could for cross-country we could here in Fishy Apples, even opting to substitute sand for snow at night during the spring & fall, and even partnering with The Onigiri Enclave and other countries, cross-country skiing just hasn't managed to get popular enough to get a dedicated representative again this year.

Last year was a mixed bag for Flying Sashimi II: Halibut's Revenge, the team that itself replaced the original controversial Flying Sashimi that had had taken the 2018 Winter Games too seriously and ended their lives in ritual seppuku. Player rosters and staff was adjusted accordingly, with the top 30% of performing players being retained as new coaching staff was brought on to help interview replacement players to fill the open slots. The result, the formation of a new team, dubbed "Flying Sashimi III: This Time it's Cod to Work" by the players, as a recurring nod to the original team.

Returning to try once more for Oatland gold in Freestyle are two of the master skiiers that swept that Alpine division last year, Reina al-Tan'in and Indigo Potts. Last year's Maya Jubilee elected not to return this year, as she gave birth to a healthy baby girl only recently this December, and felt she would not be capable of being top form for the games, plus right now she wants to focus her attention on her child, but prior to this opted to be a coach to the other two, as well as newcomer Keiko Yotomori, a 24 year old nekomimi girl from Coral Canyon City.
We tried to talk to Reina al-Tan'in, but finding her proved a chore. After several weeks, we found her in a remote lodge north of Pannekoeken. However, we tried to ask some questions, but was simply met with silence before she teleported away.
Failing that, we went on to look for Indigo Potts to see how she was doing. "Recently I just came off winning bronze in the Fishy Apples Dowhill Freestyle Series, so there's that. I mean, that, and you lump on top of that all that all my traning I got ta do for alpine an all you other journalists that have been asking me questions right and left since last year, and I've been a busy beaver. Now, if ya don't mind, I got to get back to the slopes."
We now meet newcomer Keiko Yotomori, currently relaxing at a cider house in Goldsmith. "Nya? How did I did started in freestyle? Well, I started skiing when I was 10, in part to my dad working at a resort here in Goldsmith. I managed to get good enough that I decided to join the ski team in high school, and managed to be a regular top five competitor by my junior year. I finally decided to turn pro when I turned 18, and now I'm ranked #19 in the Fishy Apples Downhill Freestyle Series."

The Desert Rats returned to Fishy Apples last year national heroes, the girls that kicked off our winning streak for the rest of the games and led to The Bunny Fire coming away with the second highest medal count overall. Finally running on actual ice was a learning experience for them as well, as the viscosity was ever so different than their sand track back home. Now replete with notoriety, they helped bolster the popularity of bobsledding in Fishy Apples, and with that came resources. Facilities opened up, tracks were made, and a makeshift formed, which the Desert Rats dominated. They even created a variation uniquely ours employing ice mages allowing for the course to be randomized mid-race to help hone their craft further. They have also spent time working in with physicists in wind tunnels in The Onigiri Enclave to best reduce their drag, resulting in their newer, sleeker sled.

Undeterred by still not winning a medal in the Oatland Games, Fuji Gold native Holly Blossomforth once more prepares for the Oatland Games in the biathlon. "I've had four chances now to represent my country now in Oatland showing off my shooting prowess, two of those times as a biathlete. My rifle is actually one of the most state of the art gunpowder-based firearms in all of Fishy Apples right now, in large for honing my accuracy, both on stationary and on moving targets. I have clearance to have such an advanced firearm as part of the Queen's efforts to progressively modernize the military, requesting I help train the regular forces and the Apple Corps learn to use bolt-action rifles. With all the training I've done this year on my own and helping the military maybe this will finally be the year I'll become the first mermaid to win a medal at the Oatland Games."
Speaking of mermaid biathletes, Iris Croquet is also making a return trip to the Oatland Games after recently winning gold here the 2019 Fishy Apples Biathlon Grand Prix which wrapped up in November north of Pannekoeken. We caught up with her back in Scylla Falls while was off-duty from her day-to-day job as a alpine rescue specialist in the military to ask of her thoughts of the upcoming games. "I still remember the looks Holly an' I got from the local press when we landed in Bastiat. Holly was already kinda used to it, seein' as she did this once already. But for me, I felt so alien. It was the first time was outside of The Bunny Fire, an' I had to field all these extra questions about 'how do mermaids ski' an' other things related to mermaids an' back home I wasn't ready for from the locals. It was also my first exposure to television before we got it over here, so there was that too. I suspect it may of been part of what led to my performance jitters last time. This time though I'm ready."
Finally, also making a return trip is our bronze medal winner herself, Dusty Tatin. After the 2019 Winter Games, Dusty resumed a mostly quiet life back in Goldsmith, enjoying the serenity of Siren Peak, just letting fame pass her by. "I love the sport, but I'm the type that likes to push myself to the limit all the time just so I can say I'm the best. I do this because I enjoy it. If I do it and do it fast, that's just a bonus. That's why I didn't go full ham into the Grand Prix or do all these press tours. In the end it'd just burn me out on the sport. However, I'm always more than up to going to another Oatland Games!!"

The clean sweep trio from 2019 are all back and better than before!! Fishy Apples' Alpine Skiing Queens Reina al-Tan'in, Indigo Potts, and Ophelia Honeycrisp are returning to Oatland to see if they made it a back-to-back sweep!!
"Honestly, I was surprised when we pulled it off, to be honest." Indigo Potts tells us about that day. "Ta tell you the truth, I almost thought I had lost the bronze ta, if I recall right, GoodKingWenceslas, but I managed ta just squeeze by. The whole medal ceremony and after I think I was a wee drunk on adrenaline... and maybe scotch, so maybe my memory of the day wasn't the best..." *giggle* "...but it made me also realize I couldn't count on another skin of my teeth close call win like last time, so I done trained my arse off on Siren Peak during the off-season. I even passed over all the press junkets so I could train for this... plus, you got ta remember I'm also in Freestyle, so I got to train for that to."
We find Reina once more in another remote lodge in The Guppies, having proven just as elusive to find as the first time, and just like last time, she seems to mostly ignore us and seem distant to most everyone, though this attitude does a 180 around children, becoming a far more warm and open person. Finally, when it seems we have we have an opportunity to talk to her, we try to approach, but she pulls out a pocket watch and says coldly, "14:04. Optimal time. Time to summit." Before we knew it, a magic circle surrounded her on the ground and she teleported away. "You know, unless she knows and trusts you, she'll never talk to you." To our surprise, sitting on the couch was biathlete Iris Croquet. "Outside of myself, my mother, Indigo Potts, and the Queen & her sister, Reina has an explicit distrust of all adults. It all stems from her family. They were a nomadic group of ultra-hardline traditionalists living out in the Braeburn Canyon during the era of Queen Smith, and I do mean hardline. In her old family, once you turned two, you were assigned a job. That job was your life from now on. It was all you were allowed to do. It was all you were allowed to think about. You weren't allowed to consider doing anything else for the rest of your life. No other tasks. No other jobs. No dreams. In fact, if this job didn't involve preparing food or beverages in some way, you had to sit and starve and thirst until someone who had such a job prepared food for you. If you DID something outside your role, even if it something as simple as pluck a berry from a bush yourself and eat it or hum a single bar, the family just straight up killed you because you aren't a forager or a singer. You were also expected to learn flame-based magic as well, as is the tradition of the al-Tan'in family. Reina was tasked to a llama herder, but she hated the desert heat, only happy when their nomadic treks took them up into the mountains, and was an abject failure at fire magic. One day an accident caused her to be separated from her family and badly injured. They didn't even bother to look for her. Instead my mother and me found her and she was airlifted to a hospital in Pannekoeken. With no family looking for her, and Reina honestly having no interest in going back, she was put into foster care, where an elven couple adopted her, was introduced to skiing, began to learn ice magic, and for a while, was happy. During this time Queen Jackie ascended to the throne, and began to announce her plans to modernize the nation, which pleased nearly the entire nation, but infuriated Reina's family. Speaking of them, about a year and half later, Reina and her family crossed paths again wholly by accident. She came home to find her adoptive family slaughtered and her biological family waiting. They took her out to the middle of nowhere and asked a simple question while breaking her skis, 'In what fashion does that herd llamas?' It was then they ran a blade straight through her and beat her mercilessly. The only reasoned they finally stopped was she managed to use her cryomancy to convince them her heart had stopped and she was dead. Luckily, once more, my mother was on patrol in that area. Reina basically became catatonic in the hospital from the PTSD until she heard Queen Jackie herself denounce her family over the radio, and then of course learning about what happened to her family during the events of The Great Glass Valley Incident snapped her out of it. Still, the damage has been done. Now, she uses skiing as a coping mechanism. It's... what makes her happy." Shortly after Iris finishes, we decide to quietly leave.
Lastly there is Ophelia Honeycrisp, the surprise star of last year that Reina al-Tan'in took the unfounded step of mentoring. Given the story told to us by biathlete Iris Croquet, Ophelia's age may have played a role in it, given the skiing prodigy just celebrated her 16th birthday on January 4th. "At first I thought she was scary, but boy she was fun!!" Ophelia said of Reina. Ophelia showed us today her training routine she has using for the upcoming games. "In the morning I jog about a mile on the indoor track and then swim some laps in the pool to loosen up, then I hit the powder for some runs." She shows us her form, posting at point a time two tenths of a second faster than the time that got her gold last year. "Now for the part of the day that sucks..." she jokes, referring to the fact she is homeschooled by her stay-at-home father, Ulrich. Later, she does some strength training before supper and then finally a little R&R. "I'm glad the Oatland Games happen when they do, because it happens right as all our tournaments have or are currently winding down, so it's one more thing for me to do to extend the season past January."

Once more, the girls of the "Ice Cream Social" unite to represent Fishy Apples on the ice!! Last time, their silver medal escapades excited young and old alike, inspiring Mer-Apples everywhere to have their own ice cream socials for several months after the Winter Games and proved a boon for the dairy industry. Now, despite the mild nip in the air, the news the Ice Cream Social is going back for more is convincing ice cream trucks to roll out.

Nearing the end of our documentary, a new event was announced - the Ski Jump. With it, two fresh-faced athletes are getting their chance to get on that plane from The Sweet Apple Ocean to Bastiat to take part in this year's Oatland Games. First, there is Setsuna Morimoto, a 20 year old nekomimi from Pannekoeken and captain in The Imperial Hex Force, and then there's 32 year old Rohan Lodehammer from Newt, the first dwarf to represent Fishy Apples in the Oatland Games.
"Normally, my field of expertise on the mountain is strapping on a snowboard and going down the half-pipe, catching air, and jumping off smaller ramps. I figure with my practice in trick jumping and my atheltics from my military training will pay dividends in ski jumping, plus I bet I'll be the most aerodynanic jumper as well!!" she says as she swishes her tail.
Our other competitor, Rohan Lodehammer, is a dwarf formerly from the mines under New Moria, but in his 20's moved out west to the streets of the mountain town of Newt. "Ay, when ev'ryone an' there cousin has already 'apped all tha good ore spots already an' your just doin' tha same thang day in an' day out, well let's just say I had ta get ta heck'n out of Dodge an' do somethin' new, so I figure ah'd uproot an' move my bearded carcass somewhere new, leadin' me out here. Now, I tried ta get me a business goin', openin' up my own mine an' such, but in tha beginnin' it just wasn't pannin' out. I was almost burned out. Then, one day I was at a bar when a passin' mermaid lass suggested I try relaxin' my nerves with a wee bit of skiing. Figurin' I got nothin' ta lose, I tried it... Made a total ass of myself. However, ask anyone, an' they'll tell you I'm quite tha 'umble dwarf, so I went right back up that mountain an' kept at it. Sure enough, a few months later, I finally got tha hang of it, so much so that I got scouted by someone who said they were a coach for tha Fishy Apples Downhill Freestyle Series. I signed up an' spent a few years in the pro circuit, reachin' a top rank of #5 back in 2015 before hearin' about this ski jumpin' stuff. I transitioned to tha field in 2016 while gettin' back to tryin' ta get my business up an' goin', an' thin's have been goin' pretty well for me, honestly. I 'ave a successful jewelry store now, an' while there isn't yet an offical Fishy Apples Ski Jumping league yet, unofficially I'm ranked #3 in tha country."

...and so ends our 2020 entry to the Oatland Winter Games!!