phelps

it's all on Discovery+ / Eurosport Player Sunday's final session is also live on Eurosport1 HD at least, here in Italy...

no chance they can go in the big cities... first, they have no large, modern and all-featured athletics stadiums (even the Coliseum in L.A. will be a one-week wonder for athletics and it'll be back to football configuration)... second, they will draw a lot less interest among the residents than in Eugene, which is still the cradle of US athletics, despite all the troubles of the last few years...

what I don't like at all, it's once again the men's 800m Free final and the men's 4*200m Free prelims and final on the same day...we have a lot of guys swimming both events (from Detti to our young hope Galossi)...

volleyball has always had a problem with the lenght of the matches...most sessions in the previous olympics have gone way beyond the scheduled time... so, they wanted to have longer time slots for each match and less matches in total in the preliminary rounds (using 2 different venues was never an option)... p.s. just to explain...personally, I don't like this new format at all...

a couple of days almost fully dedicated to MLB Baseball (mlb.tv) and NRL Rugby (youtube), maybe with a look at the Soccer European Cups and at the Waterpolo World League finals... then, it's time for the Slalom Canoeing World Championships (from Thursday), the Commonwealth Games (especially swimming, but not only) and who knows?

Team Italy Men K1: Giovanni De Gennaro, Marcello Beda C1: Roberto Colazingari, Paolo Ceccon, Raffaello Ivaldi Extreme Kayak: Marco Vianello, Zeno Ivaldi Women K1: Stefanie Horn C1: Marta Bertoncelli, Elena Borghi

they're crazy... so, unless you're at the absolute top of the game, now going as fast as you can is not enough anymore...you need to be lucky with the draw of the people you're going to face in your heat -and possible repechage round (and in the shorter distances also with the lane draw) if you want to have a chance to go through the following round... and moreover, you have to run one more round than your strongest opponents in case you make it through to the semis (which is going to kill your chances to make another round of the event)... imho, that's unfair to half of the athletes (at least) and a clear incentive to dope more and more, as the requirements are always tougher...

this might become true and official also for the IOC (and all political institutions) really soon... Turkey have asked to change their English name officially, because they don't want to be confused with turkey anymore... just like the Czech Republic have asked to be named Czechia in the next future... right now, the procedure is not complete yet, so you might find both versions (in both cases, CZE and TUR) depending on the different organizations...

naaaa...for RTVS :SPORT I don't need any VPN...

only today, Stano and, until the last 2 kms, Kawano... they were almost perfect... even Karlstrom, until he started to struggle with the pace of the Italian and the Japanese guys... meanwhile He and the Central/South Americans were not walking correctly at least since the race got serious in the last 15 kms... among the women, Garcia Leon was absolutely (and surprisingly) very good in both races (and deserves both gold medals)... and if we don't take into consideration the doping sh*t, many Russians -even going back to the Eighties and Nineties of the last Century- used to walk really well in terms of style (especially the men)... it's not that's impossible to walk correctly at a certain pace, it's difficult...and the judges should be there to help the atheltes to stay fair (which normally it's not the case, like today with Kawano in the last km, when it was clear that he couldn't follow Stano but not even a couple of warnings kept him away from trying even if he was clearly breaking all the rules)... of course, when you go faster than 4 mins per km, you're always on the edge (and over)...once again, it's the jury that should make it possible for the athletes to make the difference within the rules... when they don't do it, you see a final 5 km stint faster than 20 mins, which is obviously possible only by being always borderline in terms of correctness of the action...

in Italy we're going to have the same 2 NOC's streams we already saw at the Mediterranean Games (they shouldn't be geoblocked)... the exact link can be found in the Med Games thread...

just a couple of fun facts... first, the final four of the men and women's Team Foil are exactly the same...same pairings in the semifinals and same medallists (and 4th place), only the score of the single matches are different... second, if the last hit (in the OT) between Marini and Lefort in the GMM of the men's Individual Foil would have gone the other way round, France and Italy would have been perfectly tied on top of the final medal table (instead, France got it all)... see you next year in Milan (when the tournament would also count for the Olympic qualification)...

Final Medal Table Place Country Gold Silver Bronze Total 1 FRA 4 2 2 8 2 KOR 3 0 0 3 3 ITA 2 4 2 8 4 HUN 2 1 0 3 5 JPN 1 1 2 4 6 USA 0 2 2 4 7 AZE 0 1 0 1 7 GER 0 1 0 1 9 ROU 0 0 2 2 9 HKG 0 0 2 2 11 POL 0 0 1 1 11 GRE 0 0 1 1 11 ESP 0 0 1 1 11 UKR 0 0 1 1 11 BEL 0 0 1 1 11 GEO 0 0 1 1

Women's Team Sabre Gold: Hungary Silver: France Bronze: Japan Semifinals France b. Japan 45-43 Hungary b. Spain 45-31 Bronze Medal match Japan b. Spain 45-43 Gold Medal match Hungary b. France 45-40 Full Ranking & Results https://fie.org/competitions/2022/251

Men's Team Foil Gold: Italy Silver: USA Bronze: France Semifinals USA b. France 45-44 Italy b. Japan 45-33 Bronze Medal match France b. Japan 45-30 Gold Medal match Italy b. USA 45-39 Full Ranking & Results https://fie.org/competitions/2022/250?tab=results

Guys, you should know I'm famous for my (wrong) predictions... You should have taken your countermeasures earlier...

I'm going to keep a university course for all those who are interested...

I wouldn't say so, at least for what concerns the team event...actually, it's a one-team show with France miles ahead of all the rivals... at least, with Russia we used to have some kind of battle for gold...right now, it's all done and dusted before the competition day starts...

Athletics, men's 10000m...that's difficult because a lot of great champions have run this race through last 100+ years and as you know, it's almost impossible to compare performances from so different periods... I was really stuck in between Nurmi and Zatopek (even if Gebresilassie and Bekele also deserved to be mentioned), but finally I opted for Emil Zatopek because of his unmatched triple (5k, 10k, marathon) in a single edition of the Olympics. Athletics, women's 10000m...I thought about Tulu for a while, but Dibaba was a more complete runner than her compatriot, so I ended up pickin' Tirunesh Dibaba... Swimming, men's 100m Backstroke...maybe Roland Matthes deserves a better treatment, but he pays for sure the place where he comes from...therefore, I chose Aaron Peirsol, surely a better swimmer overall if we look beyond the single distance. Gymnastics, women's Balance Beam...that's easy...despite all controversies, she's still unmatched, the true queen of this event... Nadia Comaneci. Gymnastics, men's Horizontal Bar...modern athletes might have more technically difficult exercises and might be more exciting to watch, but I just have to pick Mitsuo Tsukahara, a man that left one of the most important footprints in the history of the sport (and the only one to win twice this specific discipline).

so, we have 5 teams out of 6 coming home with a medal (1 gold, 2 silver, 1 bronze...waiting for today's GMM in the men's team foil vs the USA)... the only hopeless losers are the sabre girls...here we just need to ask Olga Kharlan to switch to our NT, as she now lives in Italy...because our gorls are really a disaster...

men's Team Foil Bronze Medal match: France vs Japan Gold Medal match: Italy vs USA

insane? come and get a "normal" job (if you can...) in Italy... then you'll know the true meaning of the expression "insane taxes"...

men's Team Foil, semifinals: Italy vs Japan France vs USA

women's Team Sabre Bronze Medal match: Spain vs Japan Gold Medal match: France vs Hungary

women's Team Sabre, semifinals: France vs Japan Hungary vs Spain