phelps

the most beautiful thing about team events in Fencing is that the results are not a pure addition of individual values... this kind of team relay is totally different from the old method... you need just another mindset than in the individual events and in the old team format...you just can't afford any blackout without damaging your team...

so, the women's Team Sabre field is completed... Russia Italy France South Korea Hungary United States China Tunisia in the women's Individual Sabre, instead, we have to wait for the Continental tournaments, but so far we already have 3 fencers from any of the 8 Nations qualified to the Team competition, possibly some Japanese wild cards and the qualified athletes via World ranking: Olga Kharlan Theodora Gkountoura Misaki Emura Gabriella Page Nada Hafez Bhavani Devi Chadalavada

Ok, this time it's gone the right way... our girls are in the top 4...good 45-39 win over HUN... frankly, I don't understand why they just can't perform individually, but they often manage to succeed in the team event... however, let's take everything we get...

let's see if our girls can throw a 40-33 lead against Pusztai...

85cm progress all in once! before someone asks, he was born and raised in Italy (his parents are from Nigeria, but they've been living in Italy for many years now)... he already represented Italy in the junior ranks (he was 6th at the 2017 junior Europeans) and now he's studying at the Oregon University...

very unexpected Bronze for the Italian duo Elena Berta/Bianca Caruso in the women's event... they've been quite consistent through the entire week, but they almost threw it away in the medal race... however, a double penalty for the British crew at the last mark and right on the finish line saved them from being overtaken in the final ranking by the same British duo... that penalty also saved Spain's Gold medal in a dramatic sprint finish, because if the British women would have put themselves in between NED and ESP (which was going to happen without that last penalty), the Dutch women would have won the Gold medal by a single point... unfortunately for them, the penalties against the Britons allowed the Spanish boat to end up right behind the Dutch crew in the medal race, which was enough to keep the Spaniards ahead by 1 point in the final overall ranking...

Men's Individual Sabre (Budapest, HUN) Gold: Oh Sanguk Silver: Aron Szilagyi Bronze: Sandro Bazadze & Matyas Szabo Semifinals Oh b. Szabo 15-10 Szilagyi b. Bazadze 15-6 Final Oh b. Szilagyi 15-14 Final Ranking https://fie.org/competitions/2021/160

Women's Individual Sabre (Budapest, HUN) Gold: Anna Marton Silver: Cecilia Berder Bronze: Liza Pusztai & Yoon Ji Su Semifinals Marton b. Pusztai 15-9 Berder b. Yoon 15-9 Final Marton b. Berder 15-9 Final Ranking https://fie.org/competitions/2021/151

Day #2 Men's Individual Kata Gold Medal Match: Damian Hugo Quintero Capdevila vs Alì Sofuoglu Bronze Medal Match #1: Ariel Torres Gutierrez vs Mason Stowell Bronze Medal Match #2: Roman Heydarov vs Enes Ozdemir Women's Team Kata Gold Medal Match: Spain vs Slovakia Bronze Medal Match #1: Egypt vs Turkey "A" Bronze Medal Match #2: Turkey "B" vs Turkey "C" Women's Individual Kumite, -61kg Gold Medal Match: Rozita Alipour vs Jovana Prekovic Bronze Medal Match #1: Merve Coban vs Anita Serogina Bronze Medal Match #2: Shima Alesaadi vs Ingrida Suchankova Women's Individual Kumite, -68kg Gold Medal Match: Silvia Semeraro vs Feryal Abdelaziz Bronze Medal Match #1: Marina Rakovic vs Alisa Buchinger Bronze Medal Match #2: Irina Zaretska vs Nesrine Bougrine Women's Individual Kumite, +68kg Gold Medal Match: Meltem Hocaoglu Akyol vs Sofya Berultseva Bronze Medal Match #1: Johanna Kneer vs Guadalupe Quintal Catzin Bronze Medal Match #2: Clio Ferracuti vs Vanesca Nortan Men's Individual Kumite, -75kg Gold Medal Match: Luigi Busà vs Dastonbek Otabolaev Bronze Medal Match #1: Elhami Shabani vs Noah Bitsch Bronze Medal Match #2: Erman Eltemur vs Alì Asiabari Men's Individual Kumite, -84kg Gold Medal Match: Zabiollah Poorshab vs Daniyar Yuldashev Bronze Medal Match #1: Ivan Kvesic vs Michele Martina Bronze Medal Match #2: Ugur Aktas vs Ahmed Ramadan Mohamed Men's Individual Kumite, +84kg Gold Medal Match: Sajad Ganjzadeh vs Ryzvan Talibov Bronze Medal Match #1: Gogita Arkania vs Tarek Mahmoud Taha Bronze Medal Match #2: Herolind Nishevci vs Asiman Gurbanli

I don't think this event can be really an indication of what's gonna happen in a few months... basically, this is the first fencing event in 1 full year...I'm pretty sure that not all the teams are in the same kind of shape, especially those who are already qualified (or eliminated) from the Games... for instance, in Italy Fencing has been stopped completely and actually it's still standing by...so, I expect all the Italians to have poor results in these weeks (and especially this weekend), but this doesn't mean that we won't be competitive as usual in Tokyo... p.s. and in fact, so far women's sabre specialists have had a nightmarish saturday, all of them going out in the 1st or 2nd round of the individual event... and I don't expect the men to be a lot better, too...

Women's Individual Kumite, -55kg Gold Medal Match: Valeria Kumizaki vs Valentina Toro Meneses Bronze Medal Match #1: Dorota Banaszczyk vs Tuba Yakan Bronze Medal Match #2: Anzhelika Terliuga vs Ivet Goranova

After a full year with no competition, the top class Karate is back! This week's Istanbul Premier League event, though, is just a confidence builder and it won't award any point in the Olympic Qualification Ranking, as opposed to the next round in Lisbon, which should be the final qualification event among the Premier League ones... However, it's nice to see some of the strongest specialists back on the mat... Here's a partial recap of Day #1 (women's -55kg and men's -75kg weight classes still have to complete their preliminaries)... Women's Individual Kata Gold Medal Match: Sandra Sanchez Jaime vs Dilara Bozan Bronze Medal Match #1: Carola Casale vs Lidia Rodriguez Encabo Bronze Medal Match #2: Fatemeh Sadeghi vs Terryana D'Onofrio Men's Team Kata Gold Medal Match: Turkey vs Egypt Bronze Medal Match #1: Spain vs Turkey "C" Bronze Medal Match #2: Azerbaijan vs Turkey "B" Women's Individual Kumite, -50kg Gold Medal Match: Serap Ozcelik Arapoglu vs Shara Hubrich Bronze Medal Match #1: Sara Bahmanyar vs Kateryna Kryva Bronze Medal Match #2: Reem Ahmed Salama vs Gema Morales Ozuna Men's Individual Kumite, -60kg Gold Medal Match: Eray Samdan vs Firdovsi Farzaliyev Bronze Medal Match #1: Evgeny Plakhutin vs Sadriddin Saymatov Bronze Medal Match #2: Kaisar Alpysbair vs Emil Pavlov Men's Individual Kumite, -67kg Gold Medal Match: Alì Elsawy vs Burak Uygur Bronze Medal Match #1: Assylbek Muratov vs Ernest Sharafutdinov Bronze Medal Match #2: David Nhuyen vs Yves Martial Tadissi

Karate WKF Premier League 2021 Multi-Stage Event - 12 March 2021 - 3 October 2021 Official Website Programme Results System Results Database Facebook Page Discussion Thread

and here we have also the full match...

Former Oscar Reyes (men's -81kg, PB of 370kg in total, 165kg in snatch and 205 in C&J) earlier today became a new Italian citizen and he's now going to represent Italy in the next international competitions (I don't know if his results from the last 3 years, when he was already living and training in Italy, but of course not competing for our NOC, would eventually allow him to be selected for our Olympic team)...

the full schedule is 11 races* + the Gold Medal race, where the best 10 crews from the qualifying races are admitted... if they can't sail for any reason at least 5 qualifying races, the Medal Race is not held and the final results are those according to the QR only...

Italian 20km Race Walking Championships (Grottaglie, March 7th 2021) Men's event Federico Tontodonati (1:20:12) https://www.worldathletics.org/athletes/italy/federico-tontodonati-14201596 Women's event Eleonora Giorgi (1:28:39, first 20km race in 2 years, after competing over the 50km in the past 24 months and winning the Bronze medal at the Doha Worlds in 2019) https://www.worldathletics.org/athletes/italy/eleonora-anna-giorgi-14284455 Valentina Trapletti (1:29:58) https://www.worldathletics.org/athletes/italy/valentina-trapletti-14285390 Maria Vittoria Becchetti (1:30:05) https://www.worldathletics.org/athletes/italy/mariavittoria-becchetti-14420446 (p.s. her first name is wrong...it's Maria Vittoria, as I wrote)

He was born in Texas (home of his father), but then his mom (who's 100% Italian) divorced from his dad and they came to Italy when he was about 3 or 4 years young (if you listen to him speakin' English, you immediately notice that he didn't grow up in an English-speaking Country)... so, technically, he's a fully Italian runner (as he's a fully Italian citizen because of his blood and education), definitely more than all our middle distance runners with African heritage...

Russia (women's team trap) and Croatia (men's team trap) won the last events of this world cup stage in Egypt... in the final medal table, Russia dominated the field with 5 Gold Medals, ahead of Croatia with 2 and 3 nations with 1 ( Spain, Slovakia and Ukraine)... next stop in New Delhi (IND) in 2 weeks, when also the Italian team should be back competing...

I can't believe how the Italian girls did suicide themselves at the last shooting session...Zingerle was comfortably leading the relay and missed 6 of the 8 shots, having to ski 3 penalty loops... and she still managed to end up in 3rd place... meanwhile the boys got a good bronze medal, being the top shooting team of them all (0+2 in total for the)... despite that, Poland (Gold) and France (Silver) were out of reach... Russia are 4th with 2+9 total shooting... the 3 teams on the podium in this race are the only ones not to ski any penalty loop...

yes, it's like yesterday it didn't happen at all... in Italy also the ondemand section is not available, as our public TV doesn't allow ondemand watching of their sport channel (and EAA website redirect us to our national TV)...

it should be available worldwide (no geoblocks)... https://european-athletics.com/live-stream

that's quite surprising...just before the the Olympic Games... but I guess that alpine snowboard doesn't get you so much money to postpone any good chance to improve your life in the next future...

she's her nephew... ops...the answer was already there...I read it too late...

in the men's High Jump, Protsenko is out because of an injury... there should be only 13 or 14 starters later tonight in the qualification round...