Would you believe the NCAA Indoor season has already started?      

Some changes that I've noticed:   3x3 Basketball: With the expanded 12 team field, one extra team per gender qualifies through world rankings, one extra team qualifies through the universality driven tournament and there's now an Olympic Qualifier series to award the final quotas.   Beach Volleyball: Continental qualifiers have have priority over the World championship and World Rankings quotas and there's now Olympic Qualifier Series quotas.   Canoe Sprint: World ranking system now in place and will be used instead of awarding world championship quotas. Road Cycling: 2 nations ranking quotas per gender moved to universality.   Track Cycling: Sprint and Keirin ranking list is now combined and will award 14 quotas per gender. Previously it was 7+7. Team pursuit down to 8 quotas from 10. 2 of the quotas have been moved to madison (one additional team) and 6 to the omnium.   Fencing: Can get a Continental quota of you finished in the top 24 of the rankings. It was previously top 16.    Hockey: 2 pro league quotas replace two qualification tournament quotas.   Judo: 5 less universality places and 4 more Continental places. For men, there's two more spots for Asia, one less for Oceania and 1 more for the Americas. For the women, there's one more spot for Europe, one less for Oceania and two more for Asia.   Modern Pentathlon: Less quotas awarded through world rankings as a result of quota cuts.   Open Water Swimming: Introduction of world ranking qualifier.   Sailing: In general, seems to be more quotas awarded at the last chance regatta and less quotas at the World Championships   Shooting: One less quota handed out at each World Championship and the return on World Cup qualifiers.   Swimming: Olympic qualification and consideration times renamed to A and B standard. B standard is now 1% slower than the A standard compared to 0.5% in 2024. Stroke 50s have their own direct qualification events and have minimum time standards instead of A and B standards. Qualification times have been nuked again. B standard selection process has also changed.   Volleyball: New revised format. Continental championships first, then world championships followed by world rankings. In 2024, it was 3 qualification tournaments and then world rankings. Only 3 countries per gender will qualify by world rankings now compared to 5 in 2024

For Italy, the match against Japan and likely the final match against Estonia will be a safe/relegation game, but I'm think that whether the match against Estonia will be decisive on anything, if we have 0 points after 4 matches. We're currently the worst team here – we have 0 points and are taking significantly fewer shots than our opponents in each match. Japan and Estonia are looking better for now and unfortunately, without significant improvement play starting tomorrow, we'll likely be relegated to the fourth division. With the absence of Russia and Belarus, this will be a shame, even for the weaker 2006/2007 age generation. Especially, since we are playing this tournament at home. For anyone could have competed with a good shape, except perhaps Hungary, who are currently the best team in the tournament.

They shouldn't promise additional spots to countries that qualify 3 athletes in each distance, because then taking those spots away isn't fair. For example, in Italy, Previtali won the 500m QO for country but he would likely have to stay at home because the staff probably would have chosen Casinelli for the relay (Casinelli won't be competing individually at all). I don't know what the situation is in Canada with the fifth-place skater? Will this person only compete in the relay, or will he also be a reserve there? 

Time for the women's 1/2 game! 

That's too bad. Athletes who finish in the top 32 (or 36 for the 1590m) should be the priority over the 5th athlete from a relay country.   So Croatia loses their 2nd women's quota, Hong Kong loses their only women's quota and Poland loses their 3rd women's quota.   This means that Great Britain, Slovakia and Ukraine should fill up the rest of the 1500m field since they are the highest placed reserves that doesn't require an additional quota.    

Philip Rivers' possible return to NFL while being a semifinalist for the Hall of Fame certainly wasn't on my bingo card. But well. So far he's only on the practice squad

Thursday December 11th, 2025 - Round-Robin Day 4 Schedule (GMT +1)   12:30   Austria vs Ukraine 16:00   Norway vs Kazakhstan 19:30   Slovenia vs France

Wednesday December 10th, 2025 - Round-Robin Day 3 Results (GMT +1)   12:30   Austria  3 - 7  Norway 16:00   Ukraine  3 - 4  Slovenia 19:30   Kazakhstan  14 - 6  France   Provisional Standing After Day 3:   1.    8 ----------------- 2.   6 3.   6 4.   4 5.   3 ----------------- 6.   0

Thursday December 11th, 2025 - Round-Robin Day 3 Schedule (GMT +1)   12:00   Lithuania vs Estonia 16:00   Hungary vs Poland 20:00   Japan vs Italy