phelps

Blondin wins again the 3000m, beating Sablikova by almost 2 secs...

official version: slight injury sustained during the previous match... most likely: those who didn't show up in the final matches were already happy with their result and the points scored in the OQR and, feeling tired, didn't want to risk a real injury/a bad loss, so they took the silver with joy and came back home... to my memory, it's the first time that 2 gold medal matches are not contested in one single session...and tbh, it's a real shame... p.s. today we have 2 Dutch fighters in the Gold Medal matches: Michael Korrel vs Aaron Wolf in the men's +100kg and Tessie Savelkouls in the women's +78kg (and there's also Henk Grol facing David Moura for the bronze medal in the men's +100kg)... live right now on Youtube

and they were only just over a second outside the fastest time of that race (1.6 seconds outside the track record, which is even more impressive) and Natalie Corless was also 10th in the women's Nations Cup... unfortunately for her, she's not part of the official Canadian team and won't be able to start in the actual women's singles world cup race, despite being faster than 7 of the qualified girls... p.s. nice to see Emanuel Rieder back with the Italian team after this Autumn's injury (and it looks that the -almost- new doubles combo with Simon Kainzwaldner is also quite promising, already faster than the supposed no.2 Ludwig Rieder/Patrick Rastner...and actually, they won the NC race )...

World Masters (Qingdao, CHN) Day #2 Recap today's main news are Saeid Mollaei's debut as a Mongolian representative (more about that in the previous post) and the shame of both men's Gold Medal matches that actually didn't took place at all, with the eventual winners just getting a nice Santa Claus gift... Japan obviously continued their domination, winning 2 out of 4 awarded Gold Medals thanks to Soichi Hashimoto (men's -73kg) and Nami Nabekura (women's -63kg), finally taking her major honour at the Masters after 2 consecutive losses in the big final in a row in 2017 and 2018...and doing it against the reigning world champion, Clarisse Agbegnenou... then, today's remaining Gold Medals went to Belgium (Matthias Casse, men's -81kg) and the Netherlands (Kim Polling, women's -70kg...defeating Sanne Van Dijke in an all-Dutch affair final)... no need to say that because of these results, Japan strenghten their lead in the medal table with 4 Golds, meanwhile now the Nations with "only" 1 Gold medal won are 5: Full Results, here: http://www.ippon.org/masters2019.php Day #2, Final Block replay

well, I saw that match... he lost against our very talented (but still immature) guy, Christian Parlati, who actually quite dominated the fight, even if as usual he took too many risks and almost threw the victory away once he got ahead by a waza-ari... luckily, his mistake only cost him also a single waza-ari and so he finally could make up for that by throwing Mollaei on his side once again for the second waza-ari (awasete ippon)... here's the match Parlati vs Mollaei...

Doro!

what a farce of a track in Montafon! 20 secs or so...2 light turns and a long straight with a few woops... it's not even worth the time watchin'...

finally, Abraham Conyedo (world bronze medallist 2018 in men's freestyle -97kg) got his official Italian passport/citizenship and therefore he'll be able to enter the next Olympic qualification tournaments under the Italian Flag... still no news of Kudiiamagomedov (men's freestyle -86kg) and Khakelashvili (men's greco-roman wrestling, -97kg)...most likely they won't be able to represent Italy also next year...

for those who want to make their own idea of this (wonderful) place, here you can watch a lot of pictures and videos of this year's WSL event held there... https://www.worldsurfleague.com/events/2019/mct/2919/tahiti-pro-teahupoo

World Masters (Qingdao, CHN) Day #1 Recap time for the last big tournament of the year...and what a tournament it is! it's the second most important of the whole season (at least in terms of World and Olympic Qualification Ranking points awarded), the World Masters, reserved to the best 36 fighters of the world ranking in each class... and as expected, despite a few of their stars being absent, Japan topped the medal table after the first day of competition, when 5 weight classes have been completed... the world leading Judo Nation won in fact 2 out of 5 available Gold Medals, thanks to Ryuju Nagayama (men's -60kg) and Ai Shishime (women's -52kg)... today's remaining Gold Medals went to Italy (Manuel Lombardo, men's -66kg), Kosovo (Distria Krasniqi, women's -48kg) and North Korea (Kim Jin A, women's -57kg, 3rd win out of 3 IJF World Tour tournaments for her)... Full Results, here: http://www.ippon.org/masters2019.php Day #1, Final Block replay

what a wonderful landscape! and it's also it's perfectly paired with the Tokyo Docks rowing & canoeing venue...I just can't choose which one I like the most...

no, and you know that... it's dropping from the Rio bonanza (and the undeserved gold at the following worlds in Hamburg)...

the truth is that they know they won't win a single match without their usual corrupted judges to protect them... with all the officials from Rio 2016 out of contention, I expect also KAZ, UZB and FRA (at least) to drop their usual medal number dramatically...

yes, he is...

Swedish domination once again in the Champions Hockey League... 3 teams out of 4 semifinalists come from the Scandinavian powerhouse, with Mountfield Hradec Kralovè being the only flagbearer of the rest of the Continent... bitter night for the Swiss teams, all 3 losing game and qualification, even if Bienne/Biel got really close to send the reigning European champions out (it was the only match-up going to the OT)... Semifinal Pairings (7-8 & 14-15 January 2020) Luleå Hockey vs Frölunda Indians Mountfield HK vs Djurgården Stockholm

Knockout Stage Quarterfinals, Second Leg Tuesday 10.12.2019 - Results 18:00 Luleå Hockey (SWE) - Lausanne HC (SUI) 5-2 (7-3 on Aggregate) 19:45 EV Zug (SUI) - Mountfield HK (CZE) 0-4 (1-5 on Aggregate) 19:45 EHC Biel/Bienne (SUI) - Frölunda Indians (SWE) 3-5 (OT) (6-7 on Aggregate) 20:00 Red Bull Munich (GER) - Djurgården Stockholm (SWE) 0-3 (1-8 on Aggregate)

my favourite tracks are all those where German lugers don't win (or at least don't do it always)... long live Sigulda! and those where the Italians normally do well... Trebevic (Sarajevo), Lillehammer, Park City and Cesana forever in my heart!

naaa, maybe just not fully updated... according to the Italian website OA (our main sports website), Ngapeth's hearing was held earlier today (in the Brazilian morning, our late afternoon)...

he's been released after paying a 50,000 reais (around 11,000 euro) bail... he's also free to fly back to Russia with his team tomorrow...

Pyeongchang isn't that hard, but has 2 very tricky turns that helped building quite a few dramatic races (in cooperation with the unreliable weather conditions)... this one doesn't have any tricky passage (at least, looking at that picture...maybe the actual track has it)...it's more a new "Sochi" (likely the worst/most boring luge competitions ever), rather than a new "Pyeongchang"...

no technical turns, not much speed to carry on, that long flat final turn with a long finishing straight (that looks also slightly uphill)... I fear it won't be favourable to our lugers at all... our only chance might be a very, very cold temperature...otherwise it looks the classic German sweep track (Nagano rules)...

Knockout Stage Quarterfinals, Second Leg Tuesday 10.12.2019 - Schedule* 18:00 Luleå Hockey (SWE) - Lausanne HC (SUI) 19:45 EV Zug (SUI) - Mountfield HK (CZE) 19:45 EHC Biel/Bienne (SUI) - Frölunda Indians (SWE) 20:00 Red Bull Munich (GER) - Djurgården Stockholm (SWE) *All times CET Watch live Check here for details of live TV broadcasts: https://www.championshockeyleague.com/en/fans/where-to-watch All games are also live on the CHL website for free, subject to geo-blocking restrictions in certain countries due to TV rights.

it's the whole point #8 of the .pdf file (pages 23 and 24)... first they say: "When Continental Games (CG) are used for qualification, all gold medalists in the CG will be first considered. The quota will be allocated to the highest ranked gold medalist in the Olympic Standing as long as there is still an available place in their corresponding Olympic category, always respecting the maximum of one representative per NOC, per category." then: "To determine (here I'm pretty sure they have forgotten to write the word: priority) between the highest-ranked Kumite gold medallist and the highest-ranked Kata gold medallist, the points obtained in the Standing will not be used as criteria for resolution. The following criteria is to be applied: and here they start with the WKF rules we reported earlier). Finally, they further mess things up with this. "When the CG are not used for qualification, a sequence of selection processes take place, continent by continent, and qualification is determined based on the Olympic Standing of the athletes from the applicable continent". obviously, this is just my interpretation...and trust me, I can't really intend them in a different way than I wrote in today's posts...but I'm absolutely not sure at 100%, I fear that, if they want, there's always a chance to have a different interpretation of those "obscure" lines... we'll see (hoping that at the end of the OQP there are no controversial situations and everything's gonna flow "naturally")...

it's always the best position in the OQR... but there are some rules to follow (for Europe and the Americas you have to consider the European Games and Panamerican Games champions only, there's an order to follow to pick the quota -you can find it in a post at page #8 of this thread- there's a quota limit of 2 per class and among the continental spots, a single Country can add max 1 male and 1 female quota)... then, in case of a tie, there are some tie-breaking criteria (you can find them on the .pdf document attached in the previous posts)... as we wrote before, it's always a mess...

yes, you're right... I've checked it out and I found out the subsequential changes (not as many as I thought initially, however)... now it should be all fixed... for what concerns the other question, it's explained in the following page...first they look at their position in the OQR in the various classes (which remains the main criteria), then the tie breaking criteria for athletes in the same position in different classes will be a) the final placing at the 2018 world champs in their respective event, b) the best final placing at their respective continental championship and so on, as indicated at page #24 of the qualification rulebook (even if at the end of the chapter, they say that basically only the point a) is for every continent, meanwhile those who didn't use the continental Games as a qualification event, they'll go down to the OQR)... the usual WKF mess!