phelps

Canada not entering the women's Eight is shocking...

she was on the Russian quadruple sculls at the 2019 world champs (the finished 9th, the first below the line, beaten by Italy with more than 2 sec margin in the B final of that event)... her improvement in the single sculls this year, however, is frankly more than suspect...

he wrote it...the -97kg guy... well, this weight looks unbalanced too... Conyedo, Thiele and Bataev are the only 3 decent wrestlers in the top half, while in the bottom half we have Andriitsev, Baran, Saritov, Ceban...even the young promising Swiss, Scherrer... let's say that Italy, Germany and Bulgaria have been the lucky side this time...hopefully we can qualify 1 more wrestler with such a draw... meanwhile in Greco-Roman, Kakhelashvili was not that lucky...at least, he avoided the always dangerous Hrabovik, but Lokiayev, Baldauf and Szoke are not the easiest route to Tokyo... Caneva in the women's -68kg might have a chance, too, but she won't have an easy task against BLR/KAZ and eventually Manolova in the decisive bout (however, once again the lower half of the draw looks stronger than the top half)...

I don't think so... the favourite in Tokyo is Kyle Dake, then Sidakov and Chamizo... Salkazanov had the day of his life at the Europeans, but he's not on the same level of those 3 yet...

Italy is in big trouble... we have a covid outbreak in our team, and it's just among the guys who were preparing for the Qualification Regatta (who are currently working apart from those who are already qualified to the games)... the coaches say that 5 guys got infected, but now they are already negative and could start their training again, but of course this took a lot of time off to their preparation... I fear that we won't have much success in Lucerne (we still have 5 boats to qualify, with women's Fours and men's Eight being the 2 we invested more on)...

Italy men's K1 Giovanni De Gennaro (also selected for the Olympic Games) Jakob Weger Christian De Dionigi women's K1 Stephanie Horn (also selected for the Olympic Games) women's C1 Marta Bertoncelli (also selected for the Olympic Games) Elena Borghi Elena Micozzi men's C1* Raffaello Ivaldi* Roberto Colazingari Flavio Micozzi *Italy has yet to earn the olympic spot in this event. In case they get it, Raffaello Ivaldi is already selected to fly to Tokyo 2020, even if the quota place is won by another specialist.

I don't know what the right smiley is? in such case... it should be something to laugh about... but actually, it's more than sad...

Italy we already have 1 male quota (Vito Dell'Aquila, -58kg), so we're sending to Sofia 3 fighters, 1 male (Simone Alessio, -80kg) and 2 females (former Mexican Paulina Armeria Vecchi, -57kg and Maristella Smiraglia, -67kg)... Alessio should qualify without too many problems (unless he suicides by himself), meanwhile the girls will have a very difficult task, even if I hope at least 1 of the 2 would eventually make it to the Olympics...

SHL, Finals, Game #2 Game #2, as expected, it was once again a close, tough battle... Rögle strted strong as they did in game #1, but this time they didn't make any mistake and after only 4 mins of play they even took the lead thanks to adam Tambellini... They managed to keep the advantage to the first interval, but in the second period Emil Pettersson scored the game-tying goal after Växjö increased their pace to try and get the hosts in trouble. But the tie didn't last very long because at 15:11 of the second stint Leon Bristed scored the new go-ahead goal for Rögle on a rebound in front of the home goalie. In the 3rd period, despite the effort of the home team, the hosts looked in control when suddenly at 3:34 Pontus Holmberg took advantage of a really bad mistake by the Rögle goaltender and tied the match once again. Then, both teams started to be worried more about not making any further mistake than building true scoring chances and the obvious consequence was going to the OT. In the OT, nothing special happened in the first minutes, until a shot from the blue line by Hardy Haman Aktell found a hole in Rögle's defence and ended in the top corner of their cage, giving them another win in the final series of the SHL. Game #3 is scheduled for next Thursday, May 6th at 8 p.m. local time (CET) in Angelholm. Växjö Lakers HC - Rögle BK 3-2 after OT (series score: 2-0) Game #2 stats: https://stats.swehockey.se/Game/Events/545491 Highlights: https://www.shl.se/play/video/Vaxjo_Lakers_Rogle_BK-123111?provider=staylive&autoplay=1

he/she has to achieve at least the B standard... if you want to start 2 swimmers in the individual event, then they both have to achieve the A standard...

Top 5 should be enough... but it's better to wait for @MHSN to confirm that (he's the good one in maths, I've always been a disaster in that discipline

@MHSN just watched and they have fixed the mistake in women's +61... Now Gong Li is 3rd and in green, as it should be... so, as of today, we have Zaretska, Abbasali, Li and Hocaoglu qualified, with Quirici who could overtake Li if she wins the European Gold (if I'm not wrong)... unfortunately, by missin the Lisbon event, Semeraro can't be better than 7th, even if she wins the Gold Medal in Porec (and most likely, she's going to end up 8th in any case), so it's going to be almost impossible to earn the European repechage spot (we would need Gong Li to qualify via ranking, so to make Alipour get her repechage place and leave one more spot open at +68 -and of course Plank should lose a few positions by not having a good tournament in Porec)... by the way, I still hope that this happens, so take a lot of pressure off Semeraro before the final OQT in Paris... why is this qualification system such a mess?

Last night game #2 of the SHL Finals has also been played, but I haven't watched the game yet, so, I'm not going to post anything until then (and I don't know if I have time enough to watch it later today...so, it might be that I'll post results, stats and Hlts tonight or even "only" tomorrow)...

because they still have the score of the European Champs 2019, which will be deleted once they add the upcoming edition in a couple of weeks... meanwhile @MHSN has already calculated the true score without that event from 2019...

NLA, Finals, Game #1 Tonight also the Swiss NLA started their Final Series (this year, only "best-of-5")... The 2 teams involved are EV Zug, regular season winners with margin, and Genève-Servette, who were only 6th at the end of the RS, but found their best shape in the playoffs, so to eliminate Fribourg Gotteròn first and ZSC Lions then, always against the odds. Game #1 was a really close and entertaining match, with the home side being a bit more effective and capable of finding the lone goal of this match thanks to a flashy start in the central period, after just 21 seconds from the start. That goal was scored by Gregory Hoffmann. any other chance for both teams has been denied by the outstanding performance by both goalies (Daniel Manzato for Genève and Leonardo genoni for Zug), definitely the best players on the ice tonight. Game #2 is scheduled for next Wednesday, May 5th at 8 p.m. local time (CET) in Genève. EV Zug - HC Genève-Servette 1-0 (series score: 1-0) Game #1 stats: https://www.sihf.ch/de/game-center/game/#/20211105000359 Highlights: http://tv.sihf.ch/SmartPublish/index?clubId=BFA56684-1A6D-407D-866F-1E6E1F766281

this is not good news at all for me...I'm going to lose the best tech tv commentator in the world of alpine skiing (Pini used to work for the Italian speaking channel of the Swiss public TV in the last few years)...

both women's backstroke races, the men's medley relay, the women's 400H in Athletics...and "any other" (it's too early to say...but I think a few more relays in swimming are good candidates to have the WR broken, men's 200m Fly also...in track cycling it all depends on the track itself, so we just can't say if any record would eventually be in danger or not)... a few shooting and archery records might be broken, too...

Denmark, France and Spain... but I hope France don't win gold, at least (they already have too many )...

Israel (I hope, I mean...I want Qatar to win nothing), Ireland and Ukraine...

Cuba, Thailand and Smith...

Romania, Kazakhstan (unfortunately) and Dressel...

Kenya (but I hope them to have an epic fail), Belgium and Colombia (not thanks to their doped weightlifters, though)...

Iran for sure... then I chose Poland (but I wouldn't be surprised if the opposite happens) and Sweden (but I'm not convinced at 100% and I think it all depends on Sjostrom's shape)...

Croatia, Ethiopia and Czech Republic (tbh, the last 2 are really obvious)...

France, Italy (I hope...I'm just a bit biased in this case ) and New Zealand