phelps

right now, Rugby, Tri-Nations (NZL vs ARG) on my flatscreen TV and Luge & Cross-Country Skiing on my PC... Biathlon also incoming... later this afternoon, more Biathlon, Luge and Cross-Country Skiing...plus Nordic Combined (CC stage only)... and of course some Hockey (KHL & SHL) on the Czech TV Sport2 HD... tonight, some NCAA Football as usual...

most likely, they're enrolled in some military corpse... so, better earning that kind of salary by travelling the world with their luge rather than doing the actual tasks of their supposed job...

Mühlegg was always quite a strange character...surely, he was (is) more a latin type of man rather than German... p.s. actually, he was caught for NESP (Darbopoetin alfa), a new (at that time) drug derivated from EPO... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darbepoetin_alfa

Dominik Fischnaller has got mild appendicitis inflammation... they say he's gonna race in any case in this weekend (if he doesn't get worse and worse), but of course his discomfort is going to damage his performance for sure...

here's the full schedule... https://totallympics.com/topic/745-winter-olympic-games-2022-news/?do=findComment&comment=331868

it's confirmed that Dominik Windisch is out of the Italian team at the moment because he had an unclear result in a covid test... he should be tested again tomorrow to see if he's really positive or not... most likely, however, he's infected and so he's gonna be out for a while...

but are they serious or what? more and more disgusted by the ioc and by the world federations... they're just making a joke of themselves and of the olympics... I feel more and more that I'm wasting my life following this sh*t...

Japan Series 2020 so, the 2020 season is officially over also in Japan... in the revenge match-up of last year, the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks defeated once again the Yomiuri Tokyo Giants in the Japan Series with a score of 4 games to none... and if last year at least we saw 4 close games, this season's JS were basically a massacre, one sided as very few times in history already happened... 5-1, 13-2, 4-0 (with Fukuoka's closer Yuito Mori blowing a combined no-hit with just an out still to be recorded) and 4-1 the scores of the 4 games... Ryoya Kurihara (Fukuoka's outfielder) was named JS 2020 MVP... It's the 11th overall title for the Hawks (the 4th consecutive and 6th in the last 7 years, a real domination of this decade)... Game #1 Boxscore...https://npb.jp/bis/eng/2020/games/s2020112101405.html Game #2 Boxscore...https://npb.jp/bis/eng/2020/games/s2020112201406.html Game #3 Boxscore...https://npb.jp/bis/eng/2020/games/gm20201124.html (Unofficial) Highlights Game #4 Boxscore...https://npb.jp/bis/eng/2020/games/s2020112401407.html (Unofficial) Highlights

on the men's side, Windisch, Bormolini and Cappellari were on the preliminary list, so I guess they have been left at home because they are just not in good shape (or maybe they -or someone close to them- tested positive for covid, so they have to miss this weekend...however, no news have been released about their absence)... on the women's side, there's a clear team policy trying to favour Lardschneider, Carrara and the upcoming youngsters...but the internal tests did force our TD to keep Sanfilippo and Gontier in the main team despite the original idea was to send them only in the IBU Cup team... in any case, the situation in our women's team promises to get quite explosive in the next weeks/months (and there's always the Wierer vs Vittozzi rivalry to manage, even if it looks that nowadays the hot days of the last season have been buried under the carpet...but you know, dust takes a second to come out again)...

they already are a joke... after break dance I thought we got to the extreme low point, but I see they're still digging deep... I hope one day they find what they're looking for...surely, it's not what I like...

it's Moldova...not surprising at all...

it's the Norwegian side of the same brand... https://www.infront.sport/en/news/2019/11/coop-norge-nordic-skiing-world-championship-partnership

you know...there are a lot of presidents in many sports often shouting "we're going to the Olympics", but most times it's just their dream... no chance summer sports federations would get a place at the Winter Olympics... and no chance the Italian organizer would invest a single cent in further infrastructures and events...as said before, it's easier that they will ask IOC to cut some events rather than they add more (except for those 2 disciplines mentioned above because there's a high interest by our Nation to have them in...NTL because it could increase our medal tally without investing much money -no new infrastructure is needed for NTL, Ski Mountaineering because it would be an amazing advertising for the Dolomites region = more high spending tourists = more money in the post-Olympic future)...

if Artificial Track Luge, Nordic Combined...going a bit extreme, the same Ski Jumping (not to mention some Freestyle disciplines like Aerials or Halfpipe) have their Olympic status, I don't see why NTL can't have theirs... the total number of competitive nations (and overall participants) is more or less the same...actually, in a few of those disciplines mentioned above there are even less starters than in NTL in any competition... and trust me, I'm not saying that because it's Italy and because it's me...it's only about the numbers (moreover, if they make it "Olympic", those numbers are going to increase, especially the teams that could get from simple "participants" to "medal contenders")...

be serious, guys! it's not gonna happen anything said here in the last few hours... the only new events that could be part of the 2026 schedule are Natural Track Luge and Ski Mountaineering... even Ice Climbing is highly unlikely to be named into the program... and there is absolutely no chance anything else would eventually be accepted by the organizers...actually, it's way more likely that some existing events will be cut from the original schedule to save some money...

https://www.eurohandball.com/en/news/en/denmark-to-host-all-groups-of-women-s-ehf-euro-2020/

maybe... here in Italy this year it was broadcasted by sky Italia (which is quite amazing for our market, as normally they only show mainstream events like football and motorsports)... as I wrote, this year the fact that they swam "in the bubble" in the same venue on a short period made it look closer to a regular meet and somehow I liked it more... I agree that last year it made not much sense with that itinerant format... moreover, this year we had quite a few big names in very good shape as they had no other big event to focus on, so the show of the single races was definitely a lot more exciting (the bunch of world, continental and national records is there to stand the point)... all in all, opposed to 2019, I feel this year I didn't waste my time watching it...

I think the last time I haven't been off for the Olympic Games (Summer or Winter...it's the same) was in 1988 (Seoul), when I was too young to skip school in the first 2 weeks of the year...meanwhile I remember missing whole 2 school weeks in 1992 (Albertville)... luckily, from 1994 on, I've always been capable of taking my time for the Games (until and except for 2012, when my boss at the time didn't want to cooperate and let me take my vacation period at the same time of the Olympics and so I resigned from the job )...

final day of the 2020 ISL Finals... and it was quite a show, like yesterday... Caeleb Dressel played once again the role of the cannibal, winning many races (100m Free, with 45.08, new AR, 50m Fly, 100m Medley with 49.28, new World Record, and also the Mixed 4*100m Free Relay) and breaking all sort of record... the second WR of the day came thanks to Adam Peaty in the men's 100m Breaststroke, edging out Ilya Shymanovich (BLR) 55.41 to 55.49 (the Belorussian actually tied his own old WR)... among others, to be mentioned another amazing performance by Kliment Kolesnikov over the men's 100m Back (just a few hundreds of a second outside his WR time from yesterday) and a bunch of new National and Continental records from a lot of swimmers (Olivia Smoliga, Lilly King, Duncan Scott)... for the history books, as the ISL is a "club team" competition, we must also say that the winners of this year's event are the Cali Condors, Caeleb Dressel's team...

how could I forget those epic hockey games? (especially that Slovakia vs Russia, one of the best hockey games ever in the history of the sport)

I fear you'll be very disappointed... looking at the preliminary schedule (the one included in the candidature file, which normally is already a decent preview of what's gonna happen later on), it's basically a replay of Torino 2006, with all the snow events in the morning/early afternoon (local time), as Antholz nor Val di Fiemme normally don't use artificial lights on the tracks and all races in those places are held early in the day... at night (local) there will be only Luge, Hockey, Ski Jumping, Figure Skating and Short Track Speedskating and a couple of random events from other disciplines (alpine skiing slaloms, I think)... basically, it will be a perfect edition for Asian viewers rather than Europeans (not to mention those in North America)... and I don't expect many changes to happen when the final schedule is going to be released...

it's the same lineup of events of Torino 2006 (except for the fact that the Mixed Relay wasn't in the Olympic Program at that time)...

so, Russia and France dominated the 3rd day of the European Championship, with Israel getting the only gold medal not going to the 2 powerhouses... in the final medal table, France dominated the entire field with 5 Gold Medals, followed by Russia with 3... 6 more Countries (ITA, GEO, MDA, AZE, ISR, HUN) ended up with 1 Gold Medal each... in total, 21 Nations out of the 40 that participated to the championship won at least a medal (no matter the colour)... on the Italian side, we enjoyed our first Gold Medal since 2008 thanks to the great performance by Odette Giuffrida, but the rest of the team was very disappointing, with the only exceptions of Alice Bellandi and Giorgia Stangherlin, who got robbed of well deserved bronze medals by a clearly biased Hungarian ref, who should be thrown out of the Judo operations immediately...he was really the shame of the tournament (the 2 Italian girls weren't the only players to be heavily penalized by that idiot)...

today's medallists women's -78kg Gold: Madeleine Malonga Silver: Louise Malzahn Bronze: Loriana Kuka & Karla Prodan women's +78kg Gold: Romane Dicko Silver: Iryna Kindzerska Bronze: Yelyzaveta Kalanina & Rochele Nunes men's -90kg Gold: Maikhail Igolnikov Silver: Nemanja Majdov Bronze: Beka Gviniashvili & Mammadali Mehdiyev men's -100kg Gold: Peter Paltchik Silver: Arman Adamian Bronze: Jorge Fonseca & Zelym Kotsoiev men's +100kg Gold: Tamerlan Bashaev Silver: Inal Tasoev Bronze: Levani Matiashvili & Guram Tushishvili

update... a second world record was swum today...Kliment Kolesnikov (RUS) lowered the previous mark held by the Chinese Xu Jiyao by more than 3/10 of a second...48.58 is the new mark... finally, the women's 4*100m mixed relay was won by the "Cali Condors" team with a time below the world record, but of course it won't be officially recognized (even if the 4 girls are all from the USA)...