Juegos Olímpicos Paris 2024

Quarterfinals Pairing   1A-3B - 2A-2B - 3A-1B - 4A-5A -

FINAL STANDING   9 Norway 10 Hungary   The following Nations have qualified for the Women's Ice Hockey World Championship 2026   Canada Czechia Finland Germany Japan Sweden Switzerland United States   The following Nations has been relegated to the Women's Ice Hockey  World Championship 2026   Hungary Norway

Extraliga Playoffs   The Finals (Best-of-7 Series)   HC Košice (2) vs HK Nitra (3)   Game #1 is scheduled for Friday, April 18th in Košice @ 6 p.m. CET

Extraliga Playoffs   Semifinals Results (Best-of-7 Series)   HC Košice (2) b. HKM Zvolen (10)  4-2 (3-1; 3-2; 4-1; 2-5; 0-3; 5-0)   HK Nitra (3) b. DOXXbet Vlci Žilina (4)  4-3 (2-1; 2-4; 2-1 OT; 6-2; 2-3; 2-3 OT; 7-4)

Spring Nationals, Day #3   Sara Curtis MVP of day 3 of the Italian Spring Nationals!    after improving her PB in the women's 100m freestyle already in the morning heats, in the afternoon final she destroyed not only her previous limit, but also the 9-year old National Record, previously held by our swimming icon Federica Pellegrini 53.01 is the new record   in the same race, Emma Virginia Menicucci was 2nd in 54.14 (big new PB for her) and Chiara Tarantino was 3rd in 54.28   given that Tarantino has a sub-54 PB and also Sofia Morini (here completely out of shape) is a sub-54 swimmer at her best, now the Italian women's 4*100m free relay begins to look like a good one (sure, USA and AUS are out of reach, but the rest of the world is not so far away anymore   more on Today's Finals:   men's 800m Free: 1.Davide Marchello, 7.53.32   women's 200m IM: 1.Sara Franceschi, 2.10.95; 2.Anita Gastaldi, 2.10.97 (PB), both World qualifying times   men's 200m IM: 1.Alberto Razzetti, 1.58.05 (again definitely below the expectations, something's not good with him this week ); 2.Christian Mantegazza, 1.58.95 (big PB, class of 2005)   men's 100m Free: 1.Manuel Frigo, 48.34; 2.Carlos D'Ambrosio, 48.60 (very disappointed with him...he should have swum 1 second faster); 3.Lorenzo Zazzeri, 48.62; 4.Alessandro Miressi, 48.74  even if we can add Ceccon and maybe Deplano (if he convince himself he can swim fast also the 100m and not only the 50m), the 4*100m relay's perspective is really depressing    women's 1500m Free: 1.Simona Quadarella, 16.03.77   in the club relays (the 4*100m medley relays), among the women, Sara Curtis swam "only" 1.01 in the backstroke leg, Bottazzo had a good 1.05.40 in the breastroke leg, confirming his win over the individual distance wasn't a fluke and Tarantino (53.68) and Menicucci (54.11) confirmed the value of their clockings from the individual race also with the flying start among the men, Bacico swam even better than the individual race winning effort (53.42) in the backstroke leg, Martinenghi edged out Viberti in the breastroke leg (58.70 to 58.99), Burdisso swam a decent 50.8 in the fly leg and finally Manuel Frigo confirmed himself the best 100m free specialist of the moment with an impressive 47.2 stint

Tuesday April 15th, 2025   Preliminary Round Last Day Results   Group A Central European Summer Time (GMT +2)   United States   5 - 0  Switzerland Period-by-Period: 3-0, 1-0, 1-0 April 15th 2025, h. 19:00, Arena České Budějovice, České Budějovice   Group A Final Standing   Nation P W(OTW) L(OTL) GF GA +/- Pt. United States 4 4(0) 0(0) 18 2 +16 12 Canada 4 3(0) 1(0) 17 3 +14 9 Finland 4 2(0) 2(0) 7 15 -8 6 Czechia 4 1(0) 3(0) 6 15 -9 3 Switzerland 4 0(0) 4(0) 1 14 -13 0   Group B Central European Summer Time (GMT +2)   Norway   0 - 8  Sweden Period-by-Period: 0-2, 0-3, 0-3 April 15th 2025, h. 11:00, Arena České Budějovice, České Budějovice   Germany   0 - 1  Japan Period-by-Period: 0-0, 0-1, 0-0 April 15th 2025, h. 15:00, Arena České Budějovice, České Budějovice   Group B Final Standing + Nation P W(OTW) L(OTL) GF GA +/- Pt. Sweden 4 4(0) 0(0) 17 2 +15 12 Japan 3 3(0) 1(0) 8 4 +4 9 Germany 3 2(0) 2(0) 11 9 +2 6 Norway 4 1(0) 3(0) 7 18 -11 3 Hungary 4 0(0) 4(0) 1 11 -10 0   Nations Qualified for the Quarterfinals   Canada Czechia Finland Germany Japan Sweden Switzerland United States   The following Nations have qualified for the Women's Ice Hockey World Championship 2026   Canada Czechia Finland Germany Japan Sweden Switzerland United States   The following Nations has been relegated to the Women's Ice Hockey  World Championship 2026   Hungary Norway

Wrestling is getting a complete overhaul here and the scandals have began as usual.  I will lay a not so quick summary of the situation.   Last month there were Elections for the Wrestling Federation, where the legend Stanka Zlateva (2 OG medals, 5 World & 6 European titles) was elected President. Earlier in the year she very vividly blamed in the media the old guard for bringing in an armada of foreigners and allegedly destroying the Bulgarian kids in the sport. She also said, that they wanted to take away her junior wrestlers from her club and move them to national selections with different coaches, while she wanted to continue working with them.   After getting lots of attention Zlateva decided to run in the elections. She again was mentioning, that it was unacceptable to have so many foreigners and wrestling needs an overhaul. Going into the elections she had support, but wasn't a favourite. Don't know what exactly happened on the day, but everyone else (including the old regime) withdrew and Zlateva was the only one left.    A few days after she was elected there were news, that the majority of the Federation's employees were quitting and didn't want to work for her (probably encouraged from the old regime). At one point there were concerns that the teams could miss the European Championships, because of these organizational issues, but luckily they sorted it out.    Now that the Euro is over, today they announced that all National team coaches were fired.   The new NT coaches are:   Men's Greco - Stoyan Dobrev - UWW Coach of the year in 2023, he led Serbia to 4 Golds at the 2022 Worlds. After the revolution he did for Serbian Greco he is coming home to take over GR.   Men's Freestyle - Radoslav Velikov (Olympic Medalist, World Champion). As a coach, alongside Simeon Shterev, he had coached the Women's National teams of China, Azerbaijan and Russia until Covid. Then they returned to coach clubs here.   Women's Freestyle - Simeon Shterev - A veteran of coaching Women's wrestling for 20-30 years. He discovered Stanka Zlateva and was the biggest figure here during her reign. After her career there were some issues and he was practically exiled, hence why he went to lead the NTs of China, Azerbaijan and Russia like i mentioned above.   We will see what happens next and how they will try to "revive" Bulgarian wrestling, but it's not been a good start.   Yesterday there was another semi scandal. The Greco team returned from the Euro with a Gold and Silver and there were many people to greet them, but no one from the new Federation....