Federer91

Norwegians abysmal here First Ingenritsen, now Warholm bombs.

Yeah, yeah, lesson number 1 in every school book in countries west of Hungary for 70 years.

Thankfully Koch's record survives Levrone can now retire.

And the shocks just keep on coming. Only Iran barely made it today and they were in the weakest group. Complete opposite from the Women's WCH where basically every group match was a foregone conclusion. Here there were very few non-surprises

Looks like North Korea have come to take Japan's crown as the dominating force in women's wrestling This reminds of how North Korea started winning a lot in weightlifting. It appears they are moving over to wrestling now. The World has not seen the full force of

Can't remember about that, but most likely have watched it live on TV.

True, but it has the opposite affect as well. Now with the internet i can watch it whenever i can / want. Unlike in the past, when if you didn't watch it live, you could very well have missed it. So if it's not something unmissable and i'm busy with something, i prefer to come home, have a drink, lay down and watch it like a champ.

Hey, some of us have to work.

With the magic shoes i'm expecting 45 sec in the women's 400

Bye bye Japan and the first shocking elimination of the WCH

Even more impressive is that Valencia didn't give a single point in all his 5 matches. And he isn't some new, unknown name, he has been on the circuit for a while, but nowhere near as impressive as this performance.

Another giant flop for this race and Spain.

It's only day 2 and USA have 18 gold medals already

Alfred looks like in top form to tackle the American armada.

Hudson-Smith not even in the top 3 in the heats BBC in shambles (yes we are using this pun for the whole Championships)

And the surprising results continue on day 2. Very interesting start to the WCH

Bol with a pedestrian leg these Championships and the US get their win.

Excellent, excellent first match and win for us They tried to fumble the first set after leading with 7 points, but thankfully we pulled off that marathon ending. Second and third were much more controlled and with less errors. Hopefully this will be the last time we see that human POS Grozer on a National level (unless he plans on playing till he's 50) It would be very rewarding if his final tournament is an elemination after a 0:3 from Bulgaria.

Libya did very well against Canada this morning Turkey leads Japan 1:0 and Portugal evens it with Cuba. Save to say the Men's WCH has a bit more depth than what we saw with the Women

By the way, i haven't looked at the stats, but i'm pretty sure this is going to be our smallest team at a WCH in decades.. From 30 weights, we are sending 14 wrestlers, not even 50% Men's Freestyle - 7 , Greco - 4, Women's Freestyle - 3 The collapse in the women is especially shocking, since for years it was by far our strongest style and our team very well was top 5-6 in the World.

And their website layout is completely atrocious for PC.

Looks like this situation is way more interesting in Iran, than it is here. Frankly people have stopped bothering with it after the big fuss in April. There were some mentions this week after the team for the WCH was announced, but the general reactions are the likes of eye rolling and "another usual Bulgarian sports federation circus, who cares" As for an update, it's same status quo. Both sides are not budging. The Federation's rule is firm, you either train with the new National team coaches in a centralized system and cut ties with the former regime, or you don't compete in the big events. And evidently they have no problem excluding our 3 best wrestlers because of this. They are not banned forever, if they agree to train with the NT they will be back, but by the looks of it, it's not happening soon. Of course it's a real shame for the wrestlers themselves, especially Milov, who came back from a big injury and missed his weight in Paris. Ramazanov is supposedly injured and will have surgery, so allegedly this is the reason he misses the WCH, but i think he is in the same group with the rest. As for switching the NOC, wasn't the new rule excluding previous switches before it was implemented? As in, you can only make one NOC change after the new rule starts, regardless if you have already switched before, or am i missing something?

Main reason some sports grow and some always stay in the shadows. Having a regular circuit of events, on known broadcast networks, in a multitude of countries is a huge factor in gaining an audience. It's not fair to compare archery with skiing, biathlon or cycling for example, because those sports have had decades of popularity and a much bigger reach. But you can compare it to sports like snooker, darts, where having tournaments every month more or less, gets people invested in the players, it's easy for viewers to tune in without going through hoops and are much more likely to develop a habit of following the sport.

People at UWW (and a few other smaller sports) love to shoot themselves with the scheduling. Like no one saw that this exact week are the athletics and volleyball World Championships as well. We need to seriously get away from this late August-September cluster, where 20 sports want to have their WCH. Especially pure indoor sports like wrestling, where they could very easily have them the first week of October for instance.