Federer91

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.

Camera time equally distributed between Sinner, Alcaraz and the people on the stands (but no Trump so far).

40 minutes delay of the final, because of Donnie..

Orro can have every kind of awards in my eyes Plus the MVP is always a person from the winning team and given that there were no Italians amongst 3 main attackers, there is no other option. They won't give it to the libero and for a MB to get it, they need to be flawless, which Danesi is definitely not.

For being the pre-tournament odds on favourites, Serbia haven't been very convincing so far in their matches. Unlike Germany who have bulldozed their opponents.

Epic, epic match I think everyone knew this was going to be the real final before the final. Italy's winning streak continues, but it was by the skin of their teeth. When are Brazil building a statue of Gabi? This woman is just unbelievably amazing.

The tendency of USA having stronger athletics than swimming will continue I see. Especially on the women's side their team is scary deep.

You can still hope that Norway and Israel can have a draw, but you would still need to win everything till the end.

There is something psychologically wrong with Italy in the past couple of years (regardless of their win of the Euro in 21). On paper and in their clubs these players are much, much better. But when they gather them for the National team it's like they are blindfolded or something.. Like come on, they could be fielding players from Parma and Lecce and still should be beating Estonia. But the truly unbelievable part is the lack of forwards and attacking MF's for so many years. I don't understand how they can't produce 2-3 consistent attackers. I'm not even talking about having players with iconic statuses like Del Piero, Totti, Inzaghi or Vieri. There is no one of the calibre of a Luca Toni or a Gillardino, or Di Natale even, who would have done wonders for the current squad. I've been a fan of the Italian national team for 25 years now and when i see that Retegi and Keen are the best thing they can put out i could literary start crying and i'm not even Italian.

A historic moment, as for the first time there will be an all-Bulgarian GS final. Ivan Ivanov and Aleksandar Vasilev made the Boys singles final. They already could have done this 2 months ago, but Vasilev lost the 1/2 at Wimbledon, while Ivanov went to win the title. So this is going to be a second consecutive boys GS title for .

Not the ideal time to be skipping matches, when you are leading 2:0 Deutschland

ARD is showing it, if you want to watch.

Actually, the real record is 0-13 from 1933, in a match in Madrid, which is the biggest defeat our National team has had in history.

Couldn't even manage 10 minutes, i should have gone lower.

We are opening the (hopeless) qualifications against Espana in half an hour. We haven't played them in an official match since 1998 (had a friendly in 2002), so it's one long-awaited match-up. Though given the times and how Spain are as strong as ever and we are as awful as ever, nothing good is coming out of this game. At work today we made bets at what time Spain will score their first goal and i was the most pessimistic. Called that by the 10th minute they would already be leading.

I think the hosting burden can be trimmed a lot. As much as people like to have some type of opening and closing ceremonies, with facts about the countries, it's extra, extra work for the organizer. We, as worldwide sporting fans likely already know most of the facts about the host country, so it's not that necessary for having the contest. People will be much more inclined to host, if it's just calculating the results and preparing only the general tables of the Grand finale. I don't think people have issues with the listening of the songs, after all there is usually a month or more for submitting the votes, so there is enough time. If people listen to 3 songs every day, that's just 12 minutes.

Ahm, it's probably from 7-8 years ago