copravolley

Rampula why...

Women's  rugby

Thanks, also hoping for Rampula do qualify. Anyways was thinking how about the US team as they have already selected Sanderson for the Olympic team despite Henry Leverett earned the quota. Let's see how the final goes. 

Fiorentina is SF for the second year-in-a-row.
 
Olympiacos reach the European semifinals for the first time ever.
 
 
Road to Athens (AEK Arena, May 29th)
 
Aston Villa vs Olympiacos
 
Fiorentina vs   Club Brugge

and now it's official! 
 
the IJF has officially registered Kim Polling's switch from  to  
 
now she can represent  with immediate effect
 
Polling's words on the social media (in Italian...google might be helpful):
 
"Ciao a tutti, mi chiamo Kim Polling e posso dirvi che da oggi posso rappresentare l’Italia. Sono super orgogliosa, grata, contenta e non lo so… ancora mille parole in più per darvi questa notizia. Vi parlo un po’ di me, vivo da otto anni in Italia, mi sono sposata un italiano che si chiama Andrea Regis, anche lui è stato un judoka. Abbiamo una figlia, Aurora, che è nata quasi due anni fa e viviamo a San Mauro Torinese. Ho fatto quest’anno la richiesta all’IJF di cambio nazionalità ed oggi è arrivata la notifica che è stato dato l’ok. Sono davvero super orgogliosa, grata e voglio ringraziare l’Italia, ringraziare l’Accademia Torino, la palestra in cui mi alleno da sette anni e non vedo l’ora per il futuro. Vedremo quello che riesco a fare."

Mens ILCA7 - 3 quotas (+1 Emerging Nations Program)
 
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Womens ILCA7 - 3 quotas (+1 Emerging Nations Program)
 
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Mens 49er - 4 quotas
 
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Womens 49er - 5 quotas
 
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Mixed 470 - 4 quotas
 
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Mixed Nacra 17 - 4 quotas
 
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Obviously that is nonsense. Everyone at the top dopes (at least in somewhat relevant sports), Eastern Europeans just doped more ruthlessly. Whenever there is money involved, there is cheating. Makes no sense to assume that someone who isn’t doping can win gold, when the huge majority of people live in countries where doping pays off most of the time. Why should someone in Africa/Russia/China/India not dope, when they can become „rich“ by doing it and don’t really face much consequences even if they get caught? In order to outperform the most talented, doped athletes from those nations, you have to dope as well. There is nothing to suggest that people from rich nations are genetically superior and therefore don’t have to dope to beat the doped athletes from all those other nations (that represent at least 80 % of the global population/talent pool). 
 
Anyone who disagrees has to defend one of the following two lines of reasoning and in my opinion both don’t really make sense:
a) People in rich nations are somehow special and therefore don’t have to dope to dominate the most talented, doped up athletes from the rest of the world (that makes up at least 80 % of the talent pool)
b) There is no widespread doping in poorer nations (despite the evidence from countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Russia or China saying otherwise)

Spoken truly like someone, who has read only headlines growing up and never bothered learning how the system was functioning. 

The country is growing in every aspect, bar the sporting one. And this has nothing to do with the EU, as the change started happening already in 1990. It just took 15 years for everything that was built in the prior decades to fully crumble. All results in the 90s and up to Athens was the last pipeline, that was structured in the old system.
 
The truth is, like JoshMartini mentioned, that sport funding, country wide structuring and people's mentality completely changed in one day after the old regime fell. The next day and upcoming years no one was thinking about sports as an important issue. On the contrary, it became the bottom of the barrel. Which is true to this day still. Every time there is a new Government, in the 20 or so Departments, that are structured, the Sports one is always not taken seriously and the sports Minister is looked like a joke amongst the rest. There were even years, when there was no Sports Ministry and sports were added as a backburner in the Education or Youth Ministry. 
 
Regardless of the money aspect, i have talked in length before on the old system and how it will never be duplicated. 
 
In those days, for every kid, from every town and village, it was mandatory to do sport already from 1 grade. Lots of sports, after school sports, not your typical 2 hours a week killing time, like in the present. Then there were agents, or a special committee, that had a job to go to every town, to every school and scout the best children and navigate them to which sport will be best suited for their abilities, so that they can start specifically training in their pre-teenage days. 
 
After that they were taken first from the local coaches, again every big town had training camps for a dozen sports, it wasn't just the one camp, where you could go train for gymnastics etc. Then there were selections between the different regions and only after that you were elevated to National team status and get the full system structure. 
 
Nothing like this is being done today. Kids are not only not encouraged to do sports, everything in the system actively tries to discourage them. Any top level athlete we have is purely based on the individual person's desire and a small team around them. 
 
I can also add the notion, that kids in the 70-90s were waking up and going to bed with only the thought of playing sports. It doesn't have to be on an organized level, just your regular play with friends. You couldn't find a street, where the neighboring children weren't playing. Even in my teen years, in the mid to late 00s, you had to wait your turn for a football field in my school, even though there are 5. Each of them were always taken, from schoolers to people on their 50s playing matches. You make a goal post on the street and play, it was a luxury to get a normal (concrete) pitch. 
 
You walk in the school today and you would be lucky to see 10 children play after school. Everything is phones, tik tok, instagram, video games, cafes etc. Who wants to sweat doing dumb sports.
 
Multiply that for the grind and dedication required for how many years before you become an elite athlete, garnered with non-existing funding, crumbling facilities, not enough knowledgeable coaches and staff in general and you get and optimistic prognosis of 5 medals. And yet, it would still be better, than a huge part of the World. People may laugh, but if we had even 40% of the system and desires from the 80s, we could be fighting for a top 20 in the medal table at least..
 
(Or you could still say it was only magical potions and mushrooms..)

It's more interesting than mocking the gracenote scam.

Is someone genuinely asking why Eastern bloc countries fell off in terms of sporting results after the arrival of democracy? 
 
East Germany only competed in 5 Olympics in rowing, but they won 48 medals, including 33 gold. They were only overtaken by the US in 2016 in the all time medal list (and they’re still ahead of the rest)
 
In Athletics, there’s still several European records that exist since the 80s with East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and the USSR all involved. 
 
This isn’t a slight on the fine people from Eastern Europe on here and the current athletes doing their best.
 
But the answer to why they were so strong in the 1980s is doping. No one disputes this. 

For nations like Bulgaria, sport investment in the 70s-90s was due to national pride and a rallying cry by the government to lower the amount of dissident despite not making the lives of the people much better.
 
When a country decides they want to invest in infrastructure and making the lives of the people better then luxury things like sport investment takes a hit. Once luxury can be affordable then sport investment goes up.
 
That's why you see countries that are actually developing tend to do poorly in sport rather than overcompensating and looking flashy.

Bayern - Real Madrid  the other semifinal

is going to win 13 gold medals in swimming only...plus all the rest
 
and I really hope  is NOT going to win all those gold medals (also,  getting more than 12...the minimum target is a record breaking 15)

Gold  
Silver  and  🥳🥳🥳

men's 10m Air Rifle
 
Gold:  Lazar Kovacevic
Silver:  Jon Hermann Hegg
Bronze:  Edoardo Bonazzi
 
Olympic Quota Places (to the NOC, NOT to the Athlete):  &  
 
Full Results and Ranking
https://www.issf-sports.org/competitions/venue/csevent.ashx?cseventid=19512

Rifle 10 M Men’s   Quota 

Bonazzi qualify to Olympics with a one-shoot shootout

La squadra maschile del tiro a segno si sta togliendo grandi soddisfazioni a Rio. Anche Bonazzi si qualifica alle olimpiadi e salgono a 214 gli italiani a Parigi

Norouziyan or Norouzian
 
"ian" is also a common suffix for Persian surnames

the 8 finalists:
 
 Josip Sikavica
 Lucas Bernard Denis Krysz
 Jon-Hermann Hegg (already qualified to the OG)
 Sviatoslav Hudzyi
 Lazar Kovacevic
 Pourya Norouziyan @MHSN is it correct or is it just Norouzi? 
 Miran Maricic
 Edoardo Bonazzi
 
p.s. any Nation can only earn 1 Quota Place

I think that: Italy, The Netherlands and Germany will be close to each other on medal table, just like in Tokio 2021. On the other hand, France will get a much better result because of being the host team.

I don't think, she played for Russia at the U18 Eurobasket 2009