Federer91

Ha, i can only dream. It's an early photo of Maria Bakalova before she became Oscar nominated Hollywood actress.

People have not been burned out from the contests in my opinion. They just stopped visiting and contributing to the forum in general.

What an embarrassment for this race. That was some amateurish level of organization. If they couldn't properly secure the race from interference, they could have at least called a snap decision to have the stage winner at the 5 km or 3 km banner. Good that I've barely had time to watch the race and am not that into the battle after this shit.

Yes, everything seems fine now

This thing starts in 2 days, yet we once again have to be detectives to get any kind of information... It's the bloody World Championships not some regional tournament in Timbuktu. New Governing body, new officials yadda-yadda, yet the organization is on the same old amateurish level. I'm not even fascinated anymore on how 10-ish sports always have the most blandest websites for their events. At least i found out our team, because they already left for England. Men: 50kg - Ergyunal Sebahtin 55kg - Javier Ibanez 60kg - Radoslav Rosenov 65kg - Viktorio Iliev 75kg - Rami Kiwan 80kg - William Cholov 85kg - Simion Boldirev +90kg - Yordan Morejon We should have had a boxer at 70kg as well, but Yasen Radev sustained an injury in the final sparring's before the WCH. Women: 48kg - Sevda Asenova 51kg - Venelina Poptoleva 80kg - Aleyna Mehmed The women's roster is disappointing and strangely shallow. Not sure if this is a weird transitional period before the new Olympics cycle, but it is a stark contrast from the past decade, when we usually had 6-8 girls at the Women's WCH.

Anyone else having a weird scrolling issue on mobile devices? For a few days when i scroll a thread on my phone, each comment is slightly enlarged and has it's own bars to navigate up-down & left-right. If i touch the comment frame it doesn't allow me to scroll the whole page, it's just stuck in the comment frame. Maybe it's from my browser, as i use Brave, but have tried resizing the pages and it's the same regardless if the zoom is 50% or 150%.

We are continuing our journey to hit rock bottom in this sport, as team Bulgaria will be consisting of 4 athletes at these Worlds: Bozhidar Saraboyukov (men's long jump); Tihomir Ivanov (men's high jump); Plamena Mitkova (women's long jump); Gabriela Petrova (women's triple jump). Can't wait in 2-3 editions, when we will have 1 man and 1 woman like the universality nations

France's team has been on the rise for a few years now, but this year especially has shown, that they can challenge the teams around 5-10 in the world. This reminds me a bit about their men's team, which 15 or so years ago had a slump and were pretty average for number of years. Granted i don't expect at all, that France's women's team will reach the hights of their men's team, but the work has been done for them to start challenging for 1/4's at big Championships, after being practically unknown in big women's volleyball on a National level.

I'm sure many will see record numbers with the ever expanding schedule.

Don't think USA losing here is that big of a shock. They have always treated this tournament as a burden obligation and don't care one bit for it.

Agree, though i think having groups of only 4, makes the group stage a bit pointless. There are only a handful of matches with clear implications about passing the group stage. Each group always has a big favourite that never loses and a big outsider that almost never wins. Which leads to only the match between the second and third seeds as a direct battle for qualification. And some groups didn't even have this battle, as the top 2 teams were much better than third and fourth one. I think groups of 6 is a better format, but it can't have a clear path to the eliminations, if they insist on the expanded number of teams.

The Stoevi sisters with another superb performance. A second 1/4 at a World Championships in their career. Too bad their success has largely been in the background of Bulgarian sport through the years.

There is enough time to start all over with a new Group. This one just won't be it. They lack a champions mentality and their results are embarrassing.

I like Zarazua, very happy she won As for Kvitova, yeah another pointless comeback. And there have been many such in the WTA in recent years. She didn't even look at 10% of her previous form, so the preparation, or motivation, was not there at all.

Who on Earth decided the Vuelta to start in... Italy? It's understandable if it's a smaller country, but Italy of all places. Are there not enough Italia races on the calendar or what. It's like if the tennis US Open have it's opening day matches be played at the AO courts..

Disappointing result, but it was evident where this was going after the shitshow at the start of the second set. Another year with minimal, if any progress at all for this team. Not being able to beat Canada, when they are without their 3 best players shows how this year has been another standstill, on the contrary of the comments that were made from the staff this summer.

Not gonna lie, Pogacar's decision to miss the Vuelta has tainted my interest in it a bit. Though i'm sure, when we get things going and start having the GC battle under way it will pop-up again.

3 of the girls who became U19 world champions this summer are actually in the roster for the WCH, so they want to incorporate them as soon as possible. But at 16 & 17 they are just too young to keep up with the level of play and power at this level. This has been a decade long issue for us and not only in volleyball, but in all of sports. We always have talented juniors, or big results at junior level, but when it comes time to pass over to the big leagues those athletes just disappear or never really reach a high level. On the contrary to other countries, where you never see them have good results at junior events (volleyball a prime example), but then they always have athletes rise up at senior level from "out of the blue".

Never seen such scenes in a senior National teams match before. Our commentators are trying to figure out what has happened and they think the initial rotation was different, than what we usually play, which threw off the payers. But it's unacceptable after the first error, that they, or the coaches couldn't clear the rotation. Now even the referees seem confused.

This match has turned into a complete shitshow for our side... And we had a nice lead in the first set. Even Canada probably doesn't know how they are getting so many free points.

Unbelievable for professional players

Tight first set as expected. Canada squeaks it, after we led for most of it, but a couple of mistakes at the end turned things around. Our middle play is non-existent, Milanova is still just a name on the field, everything goes through Stoyanova and Paskova and you have a hard time winning this way..

The most important match of the first round of play in the group stage is coming up in half an hour. vs. is pretty much a direct elimination match, as the winner is almost assured in getting to the 1/8. An interesting fact about the other team in the group . This will be their first appearance at the women's WCH in 40 years and they have a player, who had been born when they last played, as they have a 45-year old in the roster.

She would still be second even without that error, the difference was too much.

This tournament will be the first GS without a main draw Bulgarian participation in either men's or women's singles since AO 1996 and without such at the US Open since 1982