phelps

what a race it was... men's 800m have always produced great olympic finals, but that one was really epic...

obviously the main reason we got a tv coverage for this event is Frank Chamizo... but we also think it's the new politics of Sky Italia, which was recently (a year ago or so) bought by Comcast/Universal (owner also of the NBC network in the USA)... in the last few weeks they've started to buy and show a lot of sport events that in the past administration were completely ignored by the owner (the good old Rupert Murdoch, himself) in favour of the usual suspects, Football, football and Formula1 (because of Ferrari, of course) + MotoGP races (because of Valentino Rossi, not even to be said)... so we still have a lot of those things mentioned above, but now at least we also got back Volleyball Champions League (W + M), men's Waterpolo Champions League, MLB Baseball, Sailing America's Cup, Wrestling World Cup, Judo Grand Slam tournament + World Champs, even the Cinderella of team sports in our Country, Handball (they're going to show Italy's qualification matches to the next European champs for men, semis and final of the running women's Europeans, the men's Champions League Final Four tournament and the entire men's World Champ next month) and something more... finally, we can say we got back a sport package that's worth the (quite expensive) price they ask for...

basically, bigger hills, faster inrun speed, way longer distance covered by the jumpers... then of course, there are also other technical details and especially the mental aspect that play a decisive role, but for the average spectator watching on tv the 3 parameters mentioned above are the main things to be noticed...

who knows? most depends on which categories they will enter their players... however, I think there are quite good chances for France to fill all the available spots... considered the fact that the best European athletes are already qualified through the world olympic ranking, the rest of the field is not so strong...

Japan have confirmed all the 13 judo players already chosen last February in the Olympic Team despite the Olympic Games have been postponed... but they also decided that the last spot still TBD (the men's -66kg) will be awarded after a "1-shot, all or nothing" fight between Hifumi Abe and Joshiro Maruyama... super-fight to be staged on Sunday afternoon (around 4.30 p.m. local time, 8.30 a.m. in Central Europe)... I hope to be able to watch what necessarily has to be named "the fight of the year" (maybe even "the fight of the 4-year span")...can't wait...

Today's Champions: men's -58kg: Cyrian Ravet men's -68kg: Bradly Sinden men's -80kg: Julio Ferreira men's +80kg: Mahdi Khodabakhshi Today's Medallists: https://worldtaekwondoeurope.org/files/P14_MEDALLIST_BY_WEIGHT_CATEGORY_1.pdf Full Results: https://worldtaekwondoeurope.org/files/Draw_with_results_D1_European_Championships_Olympic_Weight_Champion.pdf

Live streaming from Sarajevo... https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNZ4ldstTfNvBVjlwcMr3HvNagcDm4at4

Dominik Paris is back! after the awful knee injury that killed his chances to win the overall world cup and forced him to miss the 2nd half of the season, today he made his comeback in the 1st training run of the Val D'Isere downhill... obviously he didn't even try to ski one of the best times, but at the end of his run he said he felt good while coming down the slope and that tomorrow he's also going to look for a decent clocking...

don't ask too much, now... it's already a good thing if you get the final results before the end of the week on that website (which is the official taekwondo-Europe wbsite, however)...

I have to tell you...the main Italian pay-tv (Sky Italia) has gone completely crazy... for the first time ever, they bought the tv rights for a wrestling competition (it will be the second time ever they show some wrestling on their channels, after the Olympic Games 2012, when they were our official broadcaster)... I did never expect any Italian TV Network to cover a wrestling tournament not held on our home soil, but in this crazy 2020 even the unthinkable has happened...

https://worldtaekwondoeurope.org/etu-multimedia/etu-press-releases/1223-european-championships-olympic-weight-categories-draws-day-1

he never participated to the Olympic games, but I just can't stay away from reporting the death of Paolo (Pablito) Rossi, great striker of the Italian football and absolute hero of the 1982 World Cup triumph... he was "only" 64, but cancer took him away from his family, friends and fans... R.I.P. Paolino...

no, there's a full sport removed before its debut, Karate...

in that kind of races, the coverage normally is about webcams placed on the boats and satellite tracking, plus aerial coverage (with helicopters and fixed cameras) of the finish area... it's like you can already see in regattas like the Vandèe Globe or the Quebec-Saint Malo or the Sydney-Hobart (just to name 3 of the most prestigious races of this kind in the world)... and yes, those races are expensive (in terms of boats research and construction) and above all, they are very dangerous (only a few specialists can cope with offshore sea weather conditions...and sometimes tragedies happen in any case)... it's definitely not a sport with a possible wide base of participants (basically there's no chance to match the current IOC criteria -worldwide spreading, gender equality, tv friendly action- for including it into the Games program)...

it will favour for sure those athletes swimming multiple races and more in general, it makes it easier to perform top times and climb the rankings also for less experienced athletes... it also opens the door to a few upsets...

there's another reason they cut the men's 50km race walk... Alex Schwazer, after he basically won the process in Italy against him (the judge asked to retire any accusation against him), now is on the way back... and I can only imagine the embarassment of IOC and WA should (when) they have to give him the gold medal after the next OG triumph... they can only hope Italian and Swiss burocracy can hold him out from the Tokyo Games (it's gonna be difficult to qualify if he doesn't get reinstated very soon -and he still has to force IOC and WA to lift his 8-year ban -which was going to end before 2024...so, they solved the problem by cancelling the 50km race walk from Paris 2024 program)...

the nightmare of many foreign broadcasters/journalists has happened! also the Danish derby Denmark vs Far Oer is not that bad... however, I don't see any seeded team losing their direct qualification...maybe Croatia is the team slightly more in danger then the others (because of Russia)...

today, Alpine Skiing (Men's GS) + KHL Hockey (Jokerit Helsinki @ Spartak Moscow) + Handball, women's European Champs (CZE vs ESP and RUS vs SWE)...

press conference is scheduled for 6 p.m. CET (20 minutes from now)... live streaming here:

it would be the smallest of problems... with this sh*t they're doing right now, they're just going to lose many long time die-hard fans of the Games as they were...aka they're one and only (once loyal) fanbase...

well, we can easily get rid of boxing... corruption and the fact that at the Games there are not the best fighters in business should be good enough reasons to make the change (and get Karate back with its full 12 gold medals program -and a more reasonable number of fighters in each category, as 10 is a true insult for a sport that normally lines up to 150 players up in some categories at the world champs -with 1 representative per Nation, not with 100 coming from 1 single place)... and for the racket sports, we might cut all the doubles and team events off and just keep a 64-player M + W singles in each of the sports...

I'm watching Fargo #4... quite disappointing...watched 3 episodes so far, but imho it's not even close to the first 3 seasons... main characters are not convincing at all, most actors don't fit the role (Chris Rock playing a mafia-boss is definitely a bad idea...and not the only one)...

I'm thinking more of the Versaille Palace's garden...that would be an amazing place to host some Olympic outdoor events like a cross-country race...

yes... just like X-Games were created to host those jokes now we have at the Olympics...

this is not the true coastal rowing... this is the one...