Vektor

It looks like gained the most out of the SF, they are 4th now at the bookies. I am still not sure if the jury will let them finish in the overall Top3/Top5, I think there's a good chance that they will hate it...

Too many typical ESC pop songs with female singers, Croatia, Israel or Azerbaijan had to miss, and I was sure about that the ridiculous angel guy will get in over them as he was way more memorable than the generic pop songs.

No big surprises today and I think the hype wasn't deceiving this time, and were the biggest winners of this SF. For the first time in a while I can see Malta winning ESC, it can be a consensus choice like Arcade if the audience will be bored by France and the jury will hate Italy.

I actually like it more than having one ceremony for every two or three events, it's like a half-time break where TV channels can have experts analyze the races and show interviews if they don't want to broadcast the ceremonies.

I guess it isn't completely over for us, we beat Korea. are leading the group with 2-0.

The discussion about the TV rights got me thinking: is there a site that lists which channels/companies have the most important sport broadcast rights per countries? Like, a summary of how wide the "sport TV empire" of some these companies is in Europe. In Hungary these are current sports channels, their right and owners: M4 Sport (MTVA, the Hungarian national public TV) All the national championships (including the most important: football), F1, Olympics, the matches of all the national teams (including the most important: football), World and European championships of most Olympic sports (including the most important, you guessed it, football), UEFA Champions League Sport 1 / Sport 2 (AMC Networks) The OG sports channel in Hungary, started in 2000. UEFA Europa League, Bundesliga (they will lose it this year), Handball Champions League, MLB, NBA, darts, UFC Eurosport 1 / Eurosport 2 (Discovery) Same as in other countries. Digi Sport 1 / Digi Sport 2 / Digi Sport 3 (4iG, originally owned by a Hungarian subsidiary of Digi) UEFA Europa League, 50% of Premier League, Serie A, Ligue 1, they can potentially lose the latter two this year Spíler 1 / Spíler 2 (TV2) 50% of Premier League, UEFA Champions League, La Liga Aréna4 (Network4) Bundesliga (starting this year), NHL, NFL, IndyCar, Nascar, MotoGP That's it, 11 Hungarian sports channels currently that have any important rights, and +1 during the weekends with M4 Sport+. There was a time when regular TV channels had some of the most watched events, but those days are over. The public channel, M4 Sport, has a tight grip on anything that large number of Hungarians care about thanks to the support of Orbán. Before Orbán the Hungarian national TV had far less power on the market, they even lost the FIFA World Cup in 2006, but that quickly changed after the 2010 election.

Well, the other option is to only have 2 swimmers per nation in the heats, because there's no way they will ever allow more than two per nations in the SF. Not sure which system is better for the swimmers.

Bad start for us, I am afraid that the first Hungarian curling Olympic quota will remain a distant dream.

I didn't think of Risztov and Egerszegi as "failed" swimmers because they are Olympic champions. It's also insane to compare Egerszegi at 17 to Mihályvári as Egerszegi set world records at that stage of her career and one of them stood the test of time for almost two decades. Mihályvári isn't doing anything crazy like that here, she's just improving as she should. Risztov is one of the most craziest careers of the last few decades and she still won the Olympic gold in the end. As for the other two swimmers, they never truly had their breakthrough on the senior level like Mihályvári so I didn't even remember them in this context. As Hungarian media only cares about the medalist and champions, we frequently have swimmers who get demoralized if they don't have their big breakthrough that puts the spotlight on them. Mihályvári now has an ECh medal and will likely get somewhat famous here for winning it at 17, she is now among the "top tier" Hungarian swimmers in an event where she likely won't have to compete with a stronger Hungarian as Hosszú's career is ending. She can be one of our most important swimmers after Tokyo, we usually don't waste those.

I can't remember a single Hungarian swimmer in IM who showed this kind of promise and then never broke their PB that they set at 17. This kind of career mismanagement is extremely rare for us.

I guess our issues are temporally solved in 400m IM, Hosszú is finally showing signs that she might be able to win in Tokyo and Mihályvári had a crazy new PB here, she's our future in this event.

Both Hosszú and Késely have improved slightly in the last few months, but they are still nowhere near their best. Fortunately for Hosszú this might still be enough for the gold here.

Milák is testing his endurance at this ECh, he's pretty much using this competition as a "training camp", so don't expect the most amazing times from him in his main events. His only goal at the ECh is to win two gold medals, the best times are for the Games.

Women's 400m medley Mihályvári-Farkas Viktória 3:38.07

Holy shit, Mihályvári! OQT time in women's 400 medley and huge upset inside the Hungarian team, it looks like Mihályvári will be our second choice for 400IM, not Jakabos.

It's hard to say because who knows if Hosszú was able to improve for this ECh. If she loses, I think people will finally accept that the Olympic gold (and maybe even the medal) is lost for her. I would bet on Hosszú just because she's still Katinka Hosszú, but I am afraid that it will be Willmott.

The most interesting thing for me tomorrow is how much Hosszú and Késely will disappoint me. Because they most likely will to a certain extent. The start lists are finally available: http://budapest2020.microplustiming.com/indexBudapest2021_web.php

As I said yesterday, this stage had to be the end for Valter in the lead, but this was still an amazing achievement from him and he still managed to stay really close to the best cyclists. Congrats to him and his team again, hopefully he will get nice high placement in the overall ranking in the end.

World Cup medalists WC2 500m 1. 2. 3. WK1 500m 1. 2. 3. MK2 1000m 1. 2. 3. MC2 1000m 1. 2. 3. WK2 200m 1. 2. 3. WC2 200m 1. 2. 3. MC1 500m 1. 2. 3. WK4 500m 1. 2. 3. MK4 500m 1. 2. 3. XC2 200m 1. 2. 3. XK2 200m 1. 2. 3. Amazing weekend for Germany, 6 gold medals in the Olympic events.

István Péni requested his own suspension at ISSF before the start of the investigation. The investigation is still ongoing, both by the Hungarian police and the Hungarian federation, and at its current stage the Hungarian federation concluded that someone deliberately sabotaged Péni and they presented the case to ISSF. ISSF has decided they won't restrict Péni's right to compete at the international events, which means that Péni can compete at the European Championships. This doesn't mean that Péni will surely compete in Tokyo, the investigation is still ongoing in Hungary and who knows what WADA and CAS will say about this mess.

I must say, we are looking weak on the men's side, it can be a repeat of the Rio disaster and this time I am not sure if the women will be able to save us. We need a much more promising ECh.

Jesus, we couldn't even qualify for the men's K4 final....

This will just go on until one of the side will face a devastating loss and you can guess which side that will be. We (Hungary) "needed" a second World War and the total annihilation of nationalism by the communists to give up all our hopes of redrawing the borders that was made by the West. This conflict will end with the collapse of Hamas and with the final steps of the colonization of Palestine. This is the price Arabs pay for losing numerous wars and conflicts in that area.

This isn't final, the WCh will also count. Ahmed Hamed would get the quota right now, he's 15th on the Olympic ranking. There's also a good chance that Ahmed Elgendy will also get a quota from the ranking, which would mean that Egypt will have to choose 2 athletes out of the 3 who technically qualified.

I think she's 34th in the ranking, she needs to be in the WCh Top15 at the very least to have a chance to qualify.